
A. A.WILLITS, D.D. 



1 




Class 

Book. i 



Copyright N?_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOS1TV 




DR. A. A. WILL1TS 

Hon. President of I. L. A., Dean of American Platform, and 
" The Apostle of Sunshine " 



SI £AMS 



JL.E OF 

its, D.D. 






SUNBEAMS 



BY 

'THE APOSTLE OF SUNSHINE" 
A. A. WlLLITS, D.D. 



Published by the Author 
(Copyright) 



PRESS OF 

Patterson and White Company 
philadelphia 

>l' 3 



^x> 



)CI.A283335 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Sunbeams 1 

Cheerfulness 6 

Earnestness 13 

Intelligence 22 

Moral Excellence 27 

The Good Old-fashioned Days 33 

Politics and The Pulpit 40 

The Founders of Our Republic 46 

What to Think About 54 

Troubles 60 

Rainy Days 68 

How to Treat Calumny 72 

Right Views of Life 76 

The Conversion of Saul 82 

Paul's Eulogy of David 88 

Solomon's Experiment 92 

Prayer — Its Sublimity and Preciousness 97 

The Brook and The Pool 104 

Home 109 

The Mother and Babe 119 

Books, Their Use and Abuse 125 

Misjudging Providences 129 

Westminster Abbey 135 

The Sea 141 

The Character of Christ 150 



SUNBEAMS. 

Did you ever stop to think of the 
blessed mission of a sunbeam? 

It makes no noise in the world but what 
a dull world it would be without it! 

It is the very smile of Heaven! how it 
brightens, how it quickens, how it cheers! 
how it glorifies everything! 

The genial Sydney Smith when he came 
down from his chamber in the morning 
was wont to say — 

"Daughter, open the windows and glo- 
rify the room!" 

Is there anything in the moral and 
social world like a sunbeam? O, yes! a 
smile is a sunbeam! 

A loving thought is a sunbeam ! 

A kind word is a sunbeam ! 

A good deed is a sunbeam! 

Why then shall we not all strive to fill 
the whole social world with sunbeams? 

We are all rich enough to have a share 
in such a work as that. Hannah Moore 
truly says: 



2 Sunbeams. 

"To bless mankind with tides of flowing 

wealth, 
With rank to grace them or to crown with 

health, 
Our little lot denies. Yet liberal still 
Heaven gives the counterpoise to every ill! 
Nor let us murmur at our stinted powers, 
Since kindness, love and concord may be 

ours. 
The gift of ministering to others ease 
To all her sons impartial she decrees.'' 

The happiness of mankind is not so de- 
pendent upon the great things which few 
can do as upon the ten thousand little 
things we all can do. 

And someone says — 

"The thing that goes the farthest, 
Towards making life worth while, 

That costs the least and does the most, 
Is just a pleasant smile!" 

How true that is — what a benediction 
it is to meet a smiling face! 

O, then let us not frown — let us smile! 
Let us not look sad nor cross. Let us 
look cheerful and happy! 



Sunbeams. 3 

Let us not come down in the morning 
looking as we had been riding a "night- 
mare!" — and if true — let us thank God it 
was only a dream and not a reality! 

Let your salutation of "Good Morn- 
ing!" have a musical ring and not sound 
like the croak of a frog! 

Give the breakfast-table chat a cheerful 
or merry keynote, do not eat in silence, 
mix social chat with it — tell a good story 
if you can think of one, say something that 
will cause a smile or all the better a laugh! 

Charles Lamb said — 

"One hearty laugh is worth a thousand 
groans in any market in the world." 

When breakfast is over and you are 
about to leave home be sure to give your 
wife a lover's kiss and say something 
cheering and encouraging to her as you 
leave her to the many duties, cares and 
anxieties of modern housekeeping! 

It may do her a world of good ! — a kind 
and encouraging word from those we love, 
what a cordial it is to the heart! And as 
you go forth from your home, carry a 
cheerful face and a kind heart. 



4 Sunbeams. 

Do not pass your neighbor too rapidly 
— do not give him simply a short nod of 
recognition. Stop and give him a cheerful 
salutation. Give him the grasp of a warm 
and friendly hand! Make some kind in- 
quiry as to his health and happiness! 

It will not take you long to do it and it 
may do him good all day long, aye all 
his lifelong day! 

Let us cultivate the kind heart and the 
friendly spirit for all. 

Why should we keep all the kind 
thoughts, and charitable judgments, and 
sweet flowers for the dead? 

Give them to the living! they will do a 
thousandfold more good in that direction. 

Life is too short to be filled with ani- 
mosities and faultfindings. Let us fill it 
with the sunbeams of Kindness! 

Kindness is a language which the dumb 
can speak and the deaf can understand! 

It costs but little and yet it is the most 
precious of all things, and it finds its way 
to all hearts. 

A life filled with it, is a life best filled 



Sunbeams. 5 

and life is too short and too precious to 
be filled with anything else. 

Emerson sings wisely when he says — 

"Life is too short to waste, 
In critic peep or cynic bark 

Quarrel or reprimand — 
'Twill soon be dark! 

Up! mind thine own aim and 
God speed the mark." 



CHEERFULNESS. 

There is no grace of the soul more at- 
tractive or more useful than cheerfulness, 
and there is no habit of mind we should 
moie earnestly labor to cultivate and 
manifest. 

We always find ourselves refreshed and 
benefited by the presence and converse of 
cheerful people; why should we not make 
an earnest effort to confer the same bless- 
ing upon others? 

Why should we not resolve sincerely 
and firmly that we will say nothing- 
gloomy or despondent, but always some- 
thing cheerful and bright in our inter- 
course with others? and if we can think 
of nothing pleasing or pleasant to say; 
that we will at least carry a pleasant coun- 
tenance; that we will smile and not frown 
— will look pleasant and not sad? 

It will cost us nothing and will be of 
priceless value to others; it will not only 
add to their happiness, but improve their 
disposition and make them like-minded. 
The contagiousness of cheerfulness is some- 

6 



Cheerfulness. y 

thing we too often overlook. Thank God, 
there are many things that are "catch- 
ing" besides "measles" and "smallpox." 
Kindness and cheerfulness are contagious! 
We read once a little poem, that put this 
fact in a very clear and convincing light, 
we may do good by quoting it, thus it 
ran — 

"A maiden sat within a door, 
And sang — as many a time before; 
A man to daily toil passed by, 
Nor love nor pleasure lit his eye, 
But when he heard that merry song! 
He whistled as he went along! 

A woman by a window wept 

For one who in the churchyard slept; 

But when upon her hearing fell 

That tune, she knew and loved so well, 

The flood of burning tears was stayed, 

And soon a song her lips essayed; 

Her neighbor heard the tender strain, 

And softly joined the sweet refrain. 

Thus all day long — that one song bore, 

Its joyousness, from door to door!" 



8 Cheerfulness. 

There are no doubt many things in this 
sinful world that we might find fault with 
and about which we might complain, if we 
were so disposed. 

But, on the other hand, there are thou- 
sands of things to enjoy, or for which we 
should be thankful, if we stop to think of 
them and thoughtfully ponder them, and 
is it not better to rejoice than to complain? 

The busy honey-making bee passes 
many poisonous plants and prickling 
briers that yield no sweetness, but he hums 
cheerfully on his way and seeks honey 
where it is to be found, and comes home 
laden with the sweet and golden treasure, 
to his well-stored hive! The true secret 
for awakening contentment and cheerful- 
ness in the soul is to "count our blessings" 
to think of the many things God has given 
us to enjoy! 

The grateful man is always a contented 
and a cheerful man! He does not waste 
his time or breath in groans or sighs but 
uses it to praise his gracious benefactor, 
and this is the kind of song he sings — 



Cheerfulness. 9 

"Ten thousand, thousand precious gifts 

My daily thanks employ; 
Nor is the least a cheerful heart 

That tastes those gifts with joy." 

He thinks it is no sin to enjoy what 
God has so graciously and richly given 
him to enjoy, but a grievous sin to ignore 
their existence and give God no thanks 
for their possession. 

There are thousands of people on the 
other hand who are neither grateful nor 
cheerful because they count their miseries 
instead of their mercies, and not only con- 
tinuously ponder over them but sadly re- 
hearse them at all opportunities and to 
all enquirers. 

They make us think that our form of 
salutation when we meet each other is a 
blunder: that we better adopt the genial 
salute of "Pat" and say — 

"The top of the mornin' to ye!" 
Instead of that we say "How do you do?" 
and that just opens the valve to these 
chronic complainers and they at once pro- 
ceed to regale us with a melancholy list 



io Cheerfulness. 

of all their aches and pains and their real 
or imaginary distresses! What a bore it 
is: And yet out of politeness we are com- 
pelled to listen to it all! "Complaining" 
is a miserable business — at best it is both 
sinful and hurtful — 

It hurts the complainers themselves — 
It shuts the sunshine out of their souls 
and fills them with gloom and sadness. 

"There's many a trouble, 
Would burst like a bubble, 

And into the waters of Lethe depart, 
If we did not rehearse it, 
And tenderly nurse it, 

And give it a permanent place in the 
heart !" 

And it does unspeakable mischief to 
others — many of these complainers are 
professed Christians and their sad and 
gloomy faces and their sighs and groans 
make religion look so uninviting that the 
young are repelled from it and made to 
think it comes to interfere with their en- 
joyment of life. 



Cheerfulness. 1 1 

Cowper very justly satirizes such a pre- 
sentation of Christianity — 

"Artists attend: your brushes and your 

paint ! 
Take a chair! now draw for us a Saint! 
O, sorrowful and sad! tears channel her 

cheeks ! 
A Niobe appears! Is this a saint? 
Throw brush and tints away! 
True piety is cheerful as the day 
Will weep indeed o'er other's woes 
But smiles upon her own." 

The true keynote of Christianity is Joy! 

"These things I have spoken unto you," 
said Jesus, "that my joy might remain 
with you and that your joy might be full." 
Sighs and groans are a poor return for the 
tens of thousands of blessings God is daily 
and hourly bestowing upon us, but grate- 
ful joy is the sweetest incense that ever 
ascends from earth to heaven. 

God is not glorified by our groans, but 
by our gratitude and joy! 

The command is not "Let your lips 
whine!" but "Let your light shine!" 



12 Cheerfulness. 

Show to the world that God's service 
is not a penance but a delight! that his 
yoke is easy and his burden light! 

One of the daughters of Rev. Leigh 
Richmond said — "Father made religion 
look so sweet, so lovely, and so bright, 
that we could not help being Christians !" 

"Give me the man/' says Carlyle, "who 
can sing at his work. Be his occupation 
what it may, he is more than an equal to 
any who follow the same pursuit in silent 
sulliness — he will do more in the same 
time — he will do it better — he will perse- 
vere longer. One is scarcely sensible of 
fatigue who marches to music; the very 
stars are said to make harmony as they re- 
volve in their spheres! Wonderful is the 
strength of cheerfulness! Altogether past 
calculation its power of endurance!" 

Efforts to be permanently useful must 
be uniformly joyous! — a spiritual sunshine! 
— graceful from very gladness! — beautiful 
because bright! 



EARNESTNESS. 

The most striking characteristic of the 
present age is its intense earnestness. 

The world was never half as wide awake 
before. 

The whole creation seems to be groan- 
ing and travailing in the birth-throes of a 
new life. 

The very powers of nature seem aroused 
— the forces and agents which modern sci- 
ence has evoked from the bosom of nature 
and harnessed to the service of man in 
this age, are all of the most intensely ener- 
getic type. 

It is the age of steam and electricity. 
These two simple and familiar words tell 
the whole story — but what a story they 
do tell. 

Under their fiery impulse the practical 
science of to-day outstrips the mythologi- 
cal dreams of the past. We need no 
longer talk of Aurora and the steeds of 
light or Phoebus and the chariot of the 
sun. 

The steam colt Watts caught capering 

13 



14 Earnestness. 

in a tea-kettle — and the lightning colt 
Franklin led from cloudland with a kite 
string and which our Morse has trained 
to run the track of a wire — leaves the sun 
chariot a laggard in the race. 

The President's message leaving Wash- 
ington, D. C, at 12 meridian reaches St. 
Louis, Mo. — eleven A. M. — an hour ahead 
of the sun. 

But the steam engine and the electric 
telegraph have not only revolutionized the 
whole world of physical science. They 
have done far more than that — they have 
infused their fiery energy — they have 
breathed their magnetic spirit into every 
movement of modern society. 

All departments of human activity — 
mercantile, mechanical, agricultural and 
professional — are now led by live and ear- 
nest men. 

Men who seemed to be seized by some 
indefinable impulse — that is ever saying 
to them — "What thou doest, do quickly" 
and thus pressing them forward in the 
path of enterprise with an energy and 



Earnestness. 1 5 

earnestness the world has never seen be- 
fore. 

If anyone should ask us what element 
of character we deemed most essential to 
success we should answer promptly — en- 
ergy. 

It is the best for all ages, but absolutely 
indispensable in this age. 

They asked Demosthenes what was the 
most essential thing in oratory. He an- 
swered "Energy." And when the inquiry 
was made as to the second and third essen- 
tials, he still answered "Energy." That 
the orator did not amount to anything 
who did not put his whole soul into his 
utterances. "Energy," says Goethe, "will 
do anything that can be done in this 
world, and no talents, no circumstances, 
no opportunities will make a two-legged 
animal a man without it." 

Dr. Arnold, the great teacher of Rugby, 
said: "The difference between one man 
and another is not so much in talent as in 
energy. What young men want is not 
talent, but purpose; not the power to 
achieve, but the will to labor/' 



1 6 Earnestness. 

"Nothing," says Mirabeau, "is impos- 
sible to the man who can will; it is the 
only law of success." 

"If you have great talents," says Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, "industry will improve 
them, if only moderate abilities industry 
will supply their deficiency, nothing is de- 
nied to will-directed labor, nothing is ever 
gained without it." 

Disraeli, in his first speech in the House 
of Commons in the English Parliament, 
made such an utter failure that he was 
hissed. But he turned upon his revilers, 
and shaking his finger at them with an 
undaunted soul, exclaimed, "I am in the 
habit of accomplishing what I set my heart 
upon, you shall hear me yet!" 

That man became the ablest debater in 
Parliament, and more than a match for 
Gladstone himself, and ultimately the 
Prime Minister of England. 

There is on record, nothing nobler or 
finer in the way of eloquent retort than 
his matchless reply to Daniel O'Connell, 
who had sneeringly called him "a Jew." 
"Yes, I am a Jew, and when the Right 



Earnestness. 17 

Honorable Gentleman's ancestors were 
brutal savages in an unknown island, mine 
were Priests of the Temple/' 

Every prize on earth or in heaven is 
within reach of the truly earnest soul! 

For the greatest of all teachers tell us 
that 'The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth 
violence, and the violent take it by force." 

And in splendid illustration of its truth, 
the Bible tells us that it was after a night 
of intense struggle and conflict that the 
Angel of God conferred the Knighthood 
of Heaven upon the conquering Jacob, in 
these memorable words: "Thou shalt no 
longer be called Jacob, but Israel (a 
prince), for as a Prince thou hast power 
with God and hast prevailed." 

That night's history of conflict and vic- 
tory is well worth pondering. The bless- 
ings of heaven are for those only who seek 
them with the whole heart. 

And so also is it with the prizes of earth. 

The youth with two-thirds will-power 
and one-third intelligence is much more 
likely to achieve success than one with 
two-thirds intelligence and only one-third 



1 8 Earnestness. 

will-power. Will is the driving force. 
What good is a Mogul of an engine with 
only ten pounds' pressure? 

Concentrated energy will drive a tallow 
candle through a board an inch thick. 

Put the candle in a musket with a charge 
of gunpowder behind it and then put fire 
to the powder, and as "bang" goes the 
charge, through the board goes the un- 
broken candle, leaving a smooth clean 
hole behind it. And concentrated energy 
will drive a comparatively soft head into 
the path of success and to the "mark and 
prize" which a much harder head fails to 
reach for lack of it; or, in other words, 
a man of even moderate intellectual ac- 
quirements who has the valuable faculty 
of concentrating what brains he has on 
the work before him and doing it with a 
whole-hearted zeal will achieve a success 
in life which men with greater talents fail 
to secure for want of focus and force. 

Who are the men who succeed in our 
age? Who are the men who start and 
maintain the great enterprises of our day? 
Whose steamers cleave every tide; whose 



Earnestness. 19 

sails whiten every sea, and the smoke of 
whose furnaces darken every sky; who 
span the continents with railroads and 
electric wires; whose wealth builds our 
churches, our libraries, our great schools 
of science, and who start and maintain the 
great enterprises of our day? Who are 
they? 

Are they your men of slim canes and 
slim waists, of soft hands and softer heads; 
who gossip at their clubs, and glance at 
the newspapers, and ogle the girls through 
their monocles and live on their fathers' 
money? 

Nay, verily! a very different class are 
they. They are your men of industry and 
action! Who did not come into the world 
to wait and whine until their talents 
should be discovered and sought after. 

But men who came with their loins girt 
for work with an indomitable spirit in 
them which no difficulties could daunt, no 
obstacles appall — who were not afraid of 
work and did not expect to work in gloves. 

These are the men who have built for 
themselves character and fortune and have 



20 Earnestness. 

stamped upon the age their image and 
superscription, and identified themselves 
with all that is noble, patriotic and philan- 
thropic in our modern civilization. 

A son of an English nobleman visited 
our country some time ago and was hos- 
pitably entertained by one of our success- 
ful, energetic and wealthy New York mer- 
chants who had some business relations 
with the young man's father. As he was 
about to return to England, the merchant 
said to him, "Well, what do you think of 
us Americans?" Young England replied, 
"Oh, I like them immensely — they are so 
wide awake you know? And so generous 
you know! And so full of energy and 
push you know. But there is one thing 
we have in England which I don't find 
here." "What is that?" said the merchant. 
"The aristocracy," said the young Eng- 
lishman. "The aristocracy — who are they?" 
said the merchant smiling. "Why, the 
people who do nothing, you know, and 
whose fathers did nothing, you know, and 
whose grandfathers did nothing, you 
know! The aristocracy!" "Oh," said the 



Earnestness. 21 

merchant with a twinkle in his eye, "we 
have plenty of them over here, but they 
are not in much repute and we do not call 
them by that name you mention — we call 
them 'tramps' !" 



INTELLIGENCE. 

This is pre-eminently the age of intelli- 
gence. It is not only an age of invention, 
of discovery, of investigation, but of un- 
precedented diffusion of knowledge. 

The free press with the power of the 
uprisen sun, is shedding over the whole 
world the beams of a new day. 

It is not only the age of the free press, 
but also of the free school. Knowledge is 
no longer the possession of a privileged 
few; it has become the property of the 
many. 

Lord Brougham hit this great charac- 
teristic of the age in a sentence, when he 
said, "The schoolmaster is abroad!" Yes, 
and his pupils are legions! 

Everything is now tending to show that 
the world will soon be under no govern- 
ment but that of mind. That enlight- 
ened public opinion will be the Supreme 
Court to which all great problems will be 
brought and by whose decision they will 
be settled. 

An enlightened mind has been the glory 

22 



Intelligence. 23 

and strength of man's usefulness in all 
ages. Scholarly intelligence combined 
with convincing earnestness enabled men 
to intimidate the pride of tyrannic power; 
wring from reluctant hands the Magna 
Charta of English liberties, and in a word 
achieve all those moral and political re- 
forms which have so blessed the world. 

What the world owes to ancestral learn- 
ing and wisdom can never be told. 

Knowledge is power! It is the key that 
not only unlocks the treasure chambers 
of the physical universe, but it is the key 
that unlocks the gates to the human soul 
and gives dominion over mind! 

It is a noble thing to seek knowledge. 

It is a delightful thing to find it. 

It is a glorious thing to make it our 
possession. The mind's imperishable treas- 
ure and satisfaction and great endow- 
ment for usefulness! No matter how sin- 
cere or good a man may be, his influence 
must necessarily be very limited in this age, 
without intelligence; and no matter what 
other gifts nature may bestow upon man, 



24 Intelligence. 

she never gives him knowledge. That can 
only be gained by study! 

Therefore, the youth who will not im- 
prove his mind; who will not read; who 
will not think; who will not study; w T ho 
lacks the manly resolution to become a 
scholar; who finds no interest in books 
and thinks study merely a bore — that 
youth can have his fortune told without 
going to a sorceress. He need not travel 
to Endor to consult the witch as did King 
Saul. 

Though no prophet, nor the son of a 
prophet, we will venture to predict that 
the high seats of honor and influence can 
never be his — no, not by any possibility! 

"Upon his grassy grave the men of fu- 
ture times will careless tread and read no 
honored name upon the sculptured stone." 
The age will pass him by and leave him 
to the low ambitious, the inglorious com- 
panionships and the ignoble obscurity he 
has chosen. But if, on the other hand, he 
is resolved to show himself a man; a man 
who appreciates his opportunities and real- 
izes his responsibilities and is as eager for 



Intelligence. 25 

knowledge as is a miser for gold; if he is 
willing to give many patient hours and 
forego many present pleasures for its pos- 
session, then this of all ages, and this of 
all lands, will both aid and honor him. 

Thank God the genius of American re- 
publicanism does not ask a boy what are 
his circumstances nor who were his an- 
cestors! She looks into his eyes and upon 
his brow for the patent of his nobility. She 
does not ask w r ho is he? but what is he? 
what is his spirit? what is his record? — his 
spirit on the playground; his record in the 
classroom. And if these show that he has 
the metal of true manhood in him, there 
is not a seat of influence or honor to which 
she will not welcome him. 

Joseph John Gurney, writing to his boys 
at school, said: 

"Boys, be a whole man at everything. 
"At Latin — be a whole man at Latin. 
"At history — be a whole man at history. 
"At play — be a whole man at play. 
"At worship — especially at worship — be 
a whole man at worship." 



26 Intelligence. 

There was never better advice given 
than that. Be a whole man at everything! 

A gentleman we know recently wrote 
to a banker asking opinion of a young man 
he thought of taking into his service. And 
what do you think the banker said? His 
reply was in a telegram in these words, 
"He is a hundred-point man in anything 
and everything he undertakes." The gen- 
tleman w4io received that telegram said it 
so impressed him that he pinned it up over 
his desk, remarking to a friend: "I would 
rather have that said of me than to be 
called a great this or a great that." 

Oh, yes! It is the hundred-point man 
who will take the prizes of the future. 



MORAL EXCELLENCE. 

If Christianity has not quite conquered 
all the selfishness and folly of mankind, 
she has certainly stamped her image and 
superscription upon every feature of the 
age. After a thousand battles with human 
depravity, she sits a queen to-day and gives 
moral law to the world. She has taught 
the world that man's highest excellence, 
his truest glory, his noblest equipment for 
usefulness is Moral Excellence. 

His highest blessedness is here — from 
the very constitution of the soul itself, 
man can find no true or abiding satisfac- 
tion apart from virtue. The world's great- 
est heroes, poets, orators and scholars 
have confessed that all the honors and 
plaudits the world can bestow will yield 
us no true or abiding joy if we feel in our 
secret souls that neither God nor good 
men could approve our character if they 
truly knew us. 

All the splendors and pleasures that 
affluence can give are worthless if we are 
secretly conscious of moral pauperism. 
27 



28 Moral Excellence. 

There must be within the approving con- 
science! There is no pillow upon which 
a man can sleep so sweetly and soundly 
as the pillow of conscious rectitude. 

There was profound wisdom as well as 
moral excellence in the noble words of 
Henry Clay of Kentucky, when he said: 
"I would rather be right than be presi- 
dent !" It has embalmed his name forever 
in the hearts of his countrymen, who have 
carved the words on his tomb. 

Moral excellence is man's highest glory! 
Men everywhere and in all ages have ren- 
dered it their homage, but never more so 
than in the present time. Nothing in this 
age can take the place of it, or atone for 
the want of it! 

You may have the learning of a Hum- 
boldt; the wit of a Voltaire; the genius of 
a Byron, and the eloquence of a Mirabeau ; 
yet, if you lack moral excellence, you can 
win no lasting influence or fame. 

Christianity has given her moral stand- 
ard to the world, and all men are now 
tried by it. The moral sentiment of the 
age recoils from seeing the splendors of 



Moral Excellence. 29 

intellect hovering over a bad heart and 
a base life as it would in seeing the crown 
of an angel on the brow of a fiend. Men 
of the greatest talent can win no lasting 
fame if lacking in moral principle. 

Contrast two names in our American 
history — Aaron Burr and George Wash- 
ington. Who was Aaron Burr? 

He was the grandson of Jonathan Ed- 
wards, the most famous Divine of his age. 
Burr inherited largely the splendid talents 
of a most remarkable family. He gradu- 
ated at Princeton at sixteen years of age, 
with the highest honors of that famous 
seat of learning. He came forward into 
public life at a period in our history when 
there was the greatest opportunity for 
usefulness and honor. 

The country was greatly in need of 
young men of talent, education and true 
patriotism. 

Great expectations and hopes clustered 
around young Burr when he came for- 
ward into public life, but alas! they were 
doomed to sad disappointment. A selfish 



30 Moral Excellence. 

and perverted ambition ruined both his 
character and career. 

"A firm, brave step into the right had made 
That man the Washington of trusts be- 
trayed ; 
Many steps into the wrong has given 
His name a shame, to all the winds of 
heaven." 

Who was George Washington? 

He was the son of a worthy Virginia 
farmer and a noble Christian mother, who 
breathed early and constantly into his 
young soul the true and high ideals of 
virtue, honor and unselfish patriotism. 
These qualities at maturity he nobly and 
unselfishly consecrated to the good of his 
country, and he was enabled in the hour 
of her greatest need, both in the counsel 
chamber and on the battlefield, to render 
her the most priceless service. 

What was it in Washington that has 
given him a fame so peerless? Was it his 
eloquence? He could hardly make a pub- 
lic speech. When he rose in the House 
of Burgesses to reply to a vote of thanks, 



Moral Excellence. 31 

he blushed and stammered so that the 
chairman, smiling, said: "Sit down, Mr. 
Washington! sit down! Your modesty 
equals your valor and that surpasses any 
language I possess." 

Was it his learning? No, he was not a 
great scholar, though a man of good edu- 
cation and supreme wisdom. When Pat- 
rick Henry returned from the First Con- 
tinental Congress and was asked who were 
the greatest men in that remarkable as- 
sembly, he answered: "As to eloquence, 
Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina; but as 
to solid information and sound judgment, 
George Washington of Virginia, without 
doubt was the greatest man of that body." 

No, it was not his eloquence nor his 
learning that gave Washington his exalted 
and enduring fame; it was his sound mind, 
his honest heart, his pure and unselfish 
patriotism — in a word his moral excel- 
lence. It was because from his character 
the vices of our fallen humanity were so 
thoroughly excluded and the noble vir- 
tues so fully gathered, so evenly tempered 
and so justly balanced. It was this that 



32 Moral Excellence. 

made his grateful countrymen proclaim 
him "First in war, first in peace, and first 
in the hearts of his countrymen. " 

At the first exhibition or just suspicion, 
or subsequent revelation of crime or self- 
ish ambition in Washington, that splendid 
and unsullied fame that rose for him over 
the whole world like a pure and beautiful 
exaltation, would have dissolved, and like 
the baseless fabric of a dream left not a 
"rack behind." 



THE GOOD OLD-FASHIONED 
DAYS. 

A very singular illusion of some people 
who are full of complaint and dissatisfac- 
tion with the present, is that things were 
much better in former days; that these 
modern times are not to be compared with 
the "good old-fashioned days' 1 of the past; 
that the world is retrograding and not ad- 
vancing. These dear old croakers are not 
a new and modern class; they are the frog- 
spawn of quite a remote age. 

Solomon met them three thousand years 
ago and tried to tell them in a polite way 
how silly they were. This is what he said 
to them: "Say not thou, What is the cause 
that the former days were better than 
these? For thou dost not inquire wisely 
concerning this." Far from wise, they are 
quite "otherwise." 

Some of us can remember "the good 
old-fashioned days" when our fathers sat 
by the light of pine knots and tallow 
candles — when we raked the coals of fire 
on the hearth into a little heap and cov- 

33 



34 The Good Old-Fashioned Days. 

ered them with ashes to keep them until 
the next day — and if that failed to pre- 
serve their vitality, we had to go to a 
neighbor's next morning and borrow a 
live brand. 

The only known way of producing a 
flame was striking with flint and steel into 
a box of burnt rag and catching a spark 
thereby, and with a sulphur match getting 
a flame. The invention of the "loco-foco" 
or lucifer match, that would give a flame 
at a stroke, was a wonderful advance in 
domestic convenience and comfort. 

The invention of the metallic pen 
wrought a complete revolution in the 
schoolroom. The schoolmaster's great 
equipment, when we first attended school, 
was a Roger's penknife and a bunch of 
goose quills, and his chief employment 
was making and mending pens — a whole 
line of boys waiting with pen in hand and 
with a common salutation, "Master, my 
pen sputters!" — and when a stout-fisted 
schoolboy laid himself out for bold cho- 
rography, with his head twisted and his 
tongue in his cheek, a goose-quill pen was 



The Good Old-Fashioned Days. 35 

pretty sure to sputter, but the metallic pen 
was a match for him; he could not make 
that sputter, and the pen-maker's occupa- 
tion was gone and the whole system of 
pedagogy was revolutionized. 

In the good old-fashioned days, the "ex- 
press" went on horseback, with a tin horn, 
and fifty miles a day was a fair gait and 
we knew about as much of those living 
across the sea and on other continents as 
we did of the inhabitants of Mars. 

Now with the lightning of heaven as our 
courier and the steam press as our servant, 
we read at our breakfast-table every morn- 
ing all of note that happened in the four 
quarters of the globe, the day previous. 

In the good old-fashioned days we 
knew as much about the weather of the 
future as we did about the inhabitants or 
climate of the moon, the prophetical hints 
in the old "Farmers Almanac" being 
wisely strung down a whole line of dates 
was "about this time look for a change 
of weather." 

Now the signal-service bureau has re- 
duced the matter almost to an exact sci- 



36 The Good Old-Fashioned Days. 

ence and the mariner who wishes to save 
his ship, and the lady who wishes to save 
her silk, have but to consult "old proba- 
bilities" and spread or furl their sails ac- 
cordingly. 

In the good old-fashioned days, if a man 
was so unfortunate as to get sick and fall 
into the hands of the doctors of that day, 
they bled and blistered and purged him 
until neither man nor disease had much 
chance to escape. 

Now, thanks to Hahnemann, the black 
and bitter draughts have been changed to 
delicious little sugar pellets that children 
cry for — and the wonderful discovery of 
the law of "similia similibus curantur" 
that like cures like, a man has but to smell 
of a cork, so to speak, to put a stopper to 
all the ills that flesh is heir to. 

In the good old-fashioned clays, the only 
means of public journeying from city to 
city was a stagecoach that rocked and 
pitched worse than a ship at sea and tossed 
the passengers about fearfully unless they 
were packed in like sardines; but gener- 
ally, the stage agents saw to that matter. 



The Good Old-Fashioned Days. 37 

We heard of a stage agent, who after the 
coach had stopped for dinner and the pas- 
sengers were again reseated, opened the 
coach door and enquired, "All full inside?" 
a wag replied, "I can't speak for the rest, 
but that last slice of mince pie did the 
business for me." 

In the good old-fashioned days, it took 
about three days to reach New York from 
Philadelphia, and a week to get to Pitts- 
burg. Now we go to New York in two 
hours and to Pittsburg in a day, sitting in 
a parlor car, reading or chatting, and din- 
ing with all the luxuries and comforts of 
a first-class hotel — and, if in the winter's 
cold, looking out through plate-glass win- 
dows at the scenery with the comfort of 
summer, in the steam-heated cars. 

In the good old-fashioned days, to cross 
the ocean to Europe was so serious and 
comfortless and perilous that a man was 
expected to make his will before he 
started, and his family not unfrequently 
asked public prayer in church for his 
safety. We heard of a lady whose hus- 
band had started on that sixty-day voy- 



38 The Good Old-Fashioned Days. 

age, who sent a request for prayers for 
her husband's safety, and did not punctu- 
ate it carefully — and the minister read it 
thusly: "Mr. Jedediah Brown having 
gone to sea his wife, requests the prayers 
of the congregation," a very unjust re- 
flection upon Madam Brown, for her hus- 
band was never more safe and happy than 
when in her society. 

Now to go to Europe is but a five-days' 
excursion in a palatial steamer, with all the 
comforts and luxuries of a first-class hotel; 
gorgeous saloon, forty by eighty feet, with 
piano, library, luxurious lounges, and 
staterooms with marble-topped wash 
basins with hot- and cold-water baths, and 
every modern luxury on the tables. 

In the good old-fashioned days, books 
and learning were the luxuries of the rich 
alone; now they are the priceless treasures 
of all classes. And the son of the poor 
man may become as intelligent, as useful, 
and as high in honor and in station as the 
son of the richest. 

But time would fail to tell of all the 
grand steps of progress the world has 



The Good Old-Fashioned Days. 39 

taken, not only in intelligence, but in se- 
curity to life and property and in the phys- 
ical comfort, refinement and happiness of 
mankind. 

No illusion is more ridiculous and pre- 
posterous than that the world is retro- 
grading and that former times were better 
than these. 

The world is moving — not backward, 
but upward and onward. Things are not 
yet perfect, but they are better than ever 
before and are constantly improving. 

Never were good men and good gov- 
ernment more in demand nor more in evi- 
dence. Let us not complain but rejoice 
and do all in our power to aid the onward 
and upward movement. Let every one of 
us remember and obey the excellent ad- 
vice of Edward Everett Hale: 

"Look out, not in! 
Look up, not down! 
Look forward, not back 
And lend a hand." 



POLITICS AND THE PULPIT. 

They had been hearing candidates for 
the pastorate in a certain church where 
they desired a minister who would make 
no allusion to "politics" in the pulpit, and 
they thought they had found him, and 
were quite contented with their choice, 
and a dear old sister of the church said to 
her neighbor quite exultingly: "Well, 
we've got a man now that never fetches' 
politics nor religion." 

When a minister of the Gospel comes 
down from his lofty post as the moral 
teacher and censor of all men and all par- 
ties, to take sides with some political 
party, and uses his pulpit to aid and abet 
partizans in their efforts to secure patron- 
age and power for mere personal and party 
ends, he not only degrades his high office, 
but his very manhood, and richly deserves 
the censure of all good and sensible men — 
and is quite likely to get it. 

But when a minister boldly and fear- 
lessly, as an appointed teacher of right- 
eousness, applies the pure principles of the 

40 



Politics and the Pulpit, 41 

Bible to all parties and policies, and when 
he calls men of all parties away from the 
petty strifes and contentions of partizan- 
ship and the low designs and devices of 
demagogues and place-seekers, to the 
high, pure, sweet atmosphere of Christian 
patriotism, and shows men that righteous- 
ness only exalteth a nation and that sin 
is not only the reproach of a nation, but 
its curse and ruin, then he speaks as be- 
comes the "oracles of God," and his high 
and sacred office, and deserves the thanks 
and support of all who fear God and love 
their country. 

Nothing is more important to be kept 
continually before the minds of the people 
of this nation than that the strength and 
security of our free institutions is not to 
be found in our swelling numbers, nor our 
increasing wealth, nor our widening agri- 
culture, nor our spreading commerce, nor 
even our advancing science, art and litera- 
ture, but only in the intelligence, virtue 
and patriotism of the people. 

That nations are born and live and die 
on this earth. That they have their re- 



42 Politics and the Pulpit. 

ward or their punishment on this planet. 
That there is a future judgment for indi- 
viduals, but not for nations. That right- 
eousness only can exalt and save a nation, 
that sin is not only their disgrace but 
leads to their destruction! 

That we are not living for ourselves 
alone or for our children, but for the whole 
world. That we are settling for all nations 
and for the ages to come the great ques- 
tion of free government. 

Whether the passions of men can be so 
curbed and their selfishness so restrained 
that they will of their own free accord 
subject their private will to the public 
weal. 

Whether a free, equitable, benignant. 
Christian government can be maintained 
that will spread its protecting shield over 
all classes, colors and conditions of man- 
kind, enabling all to work out their for- 
tunes and their destiny under the best pos- 
sible conditions. 

Or whether all this splendid fabric, 
which the wisdom and patriotism of our 
fathers have set up, shall be stricken down 



Politics and the Pulpit. 43 

and overturned, and the people again be 
made to bow their necks to the yoke of 
masters and become serfs, that a few may 
become lords. 

God has placed us on this great conti- 
nent, facing both Europe and Asia. We 
are destined to have a great influence upon 
the whole world. How important, there- 
fore, that we have an intelligent concep- 
tion of our position and our mission. 

And if the Christian pulpit is to keep 
silence on these great and important 
themes, how are the people to be taught? 
They, of all others, who stand as the 
great teachers of righteousness, are to hold 
these great truths up to the people and 
teach them that their patriotism should be 
hallowed by the love of God and human- 
ity, and their religion warmed and vitalized 
by the love of country. 

That patriotism is a holy flame and next 
to the love of God in a man's soul should 
be the love of country. 

They should contend earnestly against 
the mistaken tendency of many educated 
and Christian men, excusing themselves 



44 Politics and the Pulpit. 

from political duties, should teach them 
that politics is the science of government, 
and to take care of such a government 
as this and transmit it not only unim- 
paired, but improved to those who shall 
follow us, is one of the most important and 
sacred duties. 

That an American citizen should no 
more neglect his vote than he should neg- 
lect any other important duty. That he 
should no more sell his vote than he would 
sell his honor. That he should vote as he 
prays and cast his vote at the dictation 
of his own judgment and conscience, and 
not at the dictation of some political 
"boss." 

That he should cast his vote for men of 
clear heads, clean hands, and honest and 
patriotic hearts, and not for "dema- 
gogues" and place-seekers. 

He should teach that he is not the best 
patriot who makes the most noise on elec- 
tion days and shouts the loudest for lib- 
erty on the Fourth of July, with breath 
saturated with whiskey, but he is the best 
patriot who lives soberly, honestly and 



Politics and the Pulpit. 45 

righteously; who obeys the golden rule, 
"Do unto others as you would have others 
do unto you," and repudiates and despises 
Satan's brazen perversion — issued from 
the mint of hell — bearing the image and 
superscription of Satan himself, "Do 
others, or they will do you, and do them 
first." 



THE FOUNDERS OF OUR 
REPUBLIC. 

The right of revolution is one rarely to 
be used; its exercise demands the most 
serious and thoughtful pondering. Many- 
evils better be endured before resorting 
to so grave, so costly and so uncertain a 
remedy. 

So thought the founders of our nation. 
They acted with no rash haste, and not 
until they had exhausted every pacific 
remedy. They were not anarchists nor 
fanatics, but were loyal and law-abiding 
men, and men of cool and thoughtful 
minds. 

But they were English freemen, the sons 
and descendants of the men of "Magna 
Charta" and "The petition of rights;" the 
men who had extorted from King John in 
121 5, and from "Charles the First/' four 
hundred years later, those immortal parch- 
ments, still preserved in the British Mu- 
seum, and which are the charters of Eng- 
lish liberty to this day. The spirit of their 
English forefathers was in the minds and 
46 



The Founders of Our Republic. 47 

hearts of the men who founded our re- 
public. 

They could stand the toil and hardships 
of subduing a new continent, but they 
could not stand tyranny and oppression. 
They were rich enough to pay a few 
pennies tax upon tea or stamped paper, 
but not meek enough nor weak enough to 
submit to "taxation without representation." 
They drew the line there. 

They asked only the chance for free 
growth and the rights of freemen, and this 
they were determined to have and to have 
together, though the continent cracked. 

And so when petition failed and remon- 
strance failed, they met in the city of Wil- 
liam Penn, the liberty-loving Quaker, and 
formulated their wrongs and asserted their 
rights in the calm, clear and unmistakable 
words of "The Declaration of Indepen- 
dence," and never were the rights of man 
more clearly stated and more justly con- 
tended for than in that immortal docu- 
ment. 

It was the natural evolution into formu- 
lated doctrine of that august ancestral lib- 



48 The Founders of Our Republic, 

erty which Raleigh, Hampdon, Russell, 
Sydney and Milton and all the great plead- 
ers for liberty had so earnestly and elo- 
quently contended for and whose heroic 
contests had been the glory of English his- 
tory. It was the national outgrowth of 
all the struggles for human rights that had 
preceded it. It derived its spirit and virtue 
from every field of conflict in English his- 
tory; from every hour of high debate and 
every scaffold hallowed by the blood of 
the noble martyrs of English liberty. 

A thousand years brooded over that lit- 
tle room in the State House in Philadel- 
phia. There was not a knightly soldier or 
fearless and patriotic statesman standing 
for liberty in the splendid centuries of its 
English growth that was not there in spirit 
with Jefferson and Adams and Franklin 
and their forty-odd compatriots, bidding 
them be fearless and faithful and to stand 
fast by what had been transmitted to them 
as a sacred trust for all mankind. 

And faithful and fearless they were. 
Never were the rights of men more elo- 
quently, firmly and fearlessly set forth than 



The Founders of Our Republic. 49 

their matchless declaration that kings were 
the servants and not the proprietors of 
the people; that a nation claims its rights 
as derived from the laws of nature and na- 
ture's God, and not as the gift of a chief 
magistrate; that governments are insti- 
tuted to secure these inalienable rights of 
the people and that they derive their just 
power from the consent of the gov- 
erned; that whenever a government be- 
comes destructive of these ends, it is the 
right of the people to alter or to abolish 
it and to institute a new government, lay- 
ing its foundations in such principles and 
organizing its power in such forms as to 
them seem most likely to secure their 
safety and happiness. 

Such in brief epitome is the spirit and 
the essential substance of their great and 
immortal "declaration." They wrote it 
and each man signed it, and to maintain 
these eternal principles of justice and lib- 
erty, they pledged the last dollar in their 
purse and the last drop of blood in their 
veins. 

Who were these men who thus formu- 



50 The Founders of Our Republic. 

lated and signed this declaration? They 
were farmers, planters, lawyers, physicians, 
surveyors of land, and one eminent Pres- 
byterian clergyman. The majority had 
been educated in such schools and prima- 
tive colleges as then existed on this con- 
tinent, while a few had enjoyed the rare 
advantage of training abroad and of for- 
eign travel, but a considerable number, 
and some of the most influential of the 
assembly, had no other education than 
that which they had gained by diligent 
reading while at their trades and their 
farms and yet what is the testimony of 
the great English statesman Pitt (subse- 
quently Lord Chatham) as to the political 
wisdom and remarkable sagacity of the 
men who composed the First Congress of 
our nation. These are his remarkable 
words: "For myself I must avow — and I 
have read Thucydides and have studied 
and admired the master statesmen of the 
world for solidity of reason, force, of sagac- 
ity, and wisdom of conclusion, under a 
complication of difficult circumstances, no 
nation or body of men can stand in preference 



The Founders of Our Republic. 51 

to the General Congress at Philadelphia. 
The histories of Greece and Rome give us 
nothing equal to it, and all attempts to im- 
pose servitude upon such a nation must be 
in vain." 

Such was the testimony of the greatest 
statesman of his age or of any ages. Have 
we not good reason to thank God for hav- 
ing raised up as the founders of this na- 
tion, men whose devoted patriotism, 
whose political wisdom, and whose un- 
flinching love of liberty could extort such 
praise from such a source? The opinion 
of Chatham has become the verdict of his- 
tory, that God never raised up a body of 
men better fitted for a great crisis; men 
whose spirit was so firm and yet so tem- 
perate, so just and yet so wise; men who 
had the courage of their convictions and 
were willing to pledge "fortune, life and 
sacred honor" for the maintenance of the 
sacred rights of man. 

We do not believe in "Hero Worship," 
but it is surely the truest piety as well as 
patriotism to thank God for the greatest 
of all his gifts to humanity — the gift of 



52 The Founders of Our Republic. 

great and good men; men for the hour; men 
to meet the great crisis in the history of 
the race and to become the "beacon lights 
of history." And God as surely raised 
up Thomas Jefferson to write the Decla- 
ration of Independence and George Wash- 
ington to lead the army of the young Re- 
public through many sore campaigns to 
liberty and independence, as he raised up 
Moses to formulate the laws, and Joshua 
to lead the armies of Israel. 
What constitutes a state? 

"Not high-walled battlements or labored 
mounds, 

Thick wall or moated gate; 

Not cities proud, with spires and tunnels 
crowned; 

Not bays and broad-arm'd ports, 

Where laughing at the storms rich navies 
ride, 

Not star and spangled courts 

Where low-browed bareness wafts per- 
fume to pride. 



The Founders of Our Republic. 53 

No! Men, high-minded men! 

With powers above dull brutes endued, 

In forest, brake, or den; 

As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles 

rude, 
Men who their duties know, 
And know their rights, and knowing dare 

maintain/' 



WHAT TO THINK ABOUT. 

The greatest thing in the universe is 
mind. The emanations of reason are more 
refulgent rays of the "Father of Lights" 
than all the suns and stars of the physical 
universe. 

The greatest thing in mind is the power 
of thought. 

The best education is that which teaches 
us to think and to think rightly. There- 
fore, Christianity teaches us not only what 
to do, and what to say, but also what to 
think about. 

Few people seem to realize how impor- 
tant this is; but it is of the greatest impor- 
tance, for our thoughts color and form 
our character, shape our career, effect our 
influence, and our eternal destiny. 

. It is a common saying, "You may know 
a man's character by the company he 
keeps;" yet it is just as true that you may 
know his character by the secret thoughts 
he constantly and willingly entertains. 

God's word declares: "As a man think- 
eth in his heart so he is!" Therefore, one 

54 



What to Think About. 55 

of the best prayers a man can utter is that 
of David's: "Let the words of my mouth 
and the meditations of my heart be accept- 
able in thy sight, O Lord, my strength 
and my Redeemer." 

The highest and best culture is to gather 
out of history the best things that have 
ever been said or done — to ponder them 
thoughtfully to learn not only to admire 
but to drink in their spirit and try to mani- 
fest it in our daily life. 

To know, appreciate and admire what is 
noblest and best is better than varied 
knowledge, for we are moulded by what 
we love and admire much more than by 
what we simply know. 

To grow daily in love with what is true 
and good and morally beautiful is to grow 
daily more Godlike. As we think and feel, 
so we become! 

The thoughts we entertain create an at- 
mosphere in which the soul finds the 
breath of a noble and healthy life or in 
which it droops and dies as from a poison- 
ous air. Hence, St. Paul, in his noble let- 
ters to his beloved Phillipians urges them 



56 What to Think About. 

to adorn their characters with everything 
that would make their lives beautiful and 
their religion to appear noble and attrac- 
tive. He therefore tells them what to 
think about, that while there were some 
things not even to be named among them, 
there were other things which are ad- 
mitted by all to be true, pure, good and 
lovely, which even men of the world con- 
fess to be "praiseworthy. " 

These things he would not only have 
them not to forget, but to think about 
them, to meditate upon them, and thus 
sweeten their character and their lives 
with their spirit and essence, and by this 
mental process. "Helm their brows with 
honor and with high disdain for all things 
mean." And thus adorn the doctrine of 
God, their Saviour, by all that was pure 
and lofty in spirit and noble in conduct. 

And then follows the splendid catalogue 
of what he would have them think about: 

Whatsoever things are true. 

Whatsoever things are honest. 

Whatsoever things are just. 

Whatsoever things are pure. 



What to Think About. 57 

Whatsoever things are lovely. 

Whatsoever things are of good report. 

If there be any virtue and anything 
praiseworthy. "Think on these Things/' 

Think how noble and good and beautiful 
they are. 

Think how they may be made your own 
personal qualities; your soul's joy and 
honor forever. 

Think what a happy heavenly state of 
society we should have here on earth if 
these things should become universal in 
the character and conduct of men. 

Think how they may be best promoted 
and extended through the earth, and what 
you can do in a work so noble and so 
blessed. 

Imagine what a world this would be, if 
everyone in it thought only pure, noble, 
kind and generous thoughts! 

Jealousy, envy and malice would van- 
ish. Slander, evil-speaking, and all un- 
charitableness would disappear. 

The era of mercy and love would soon 
dawn on the world. 

We can hasten the dawn of this auspi- 



58 What to Think About. 

cious day by right thinking. We can re- 
tard it by evil thinking and speaking. 

Every true, kind and noble thought may 
become a gift of loving kindness to the 
whole world. 

Therefore, resolve that you will think 
and utter nothing but pure, kind and chari- 
table thoughts. Think how much mischief 
evil-speaking has done in this world, how 
readily listened to, how widely dispersed 
and what evil it has wrought. 

Resolve, therefore, you will give no ear 
to him who opens his mouth with evil 
reports. 

If there were not so many open ears, 
there would soon be fewer slanderous 
tongues. Bishop Hall truly says: "Cal- 
umny would soon starve and die if nobody 
took it in and gave it board and lodging.'' 
If evil thoughts ever intrude, give them 
instant and indignant repulsion. We are 
responsible only for their entertainment. 

Lorenzo Dow once strikingly said: "We 
cannot prevent birds from flying over our 
heads, but we can prevent them from mak- 
ing their nests in our hair." Let us not 



What to Think About. 59 

forget how our blessed Master treated evil 
suggestion, with "Get thee behind me Sa- 
tan." Keep busy doing right as well as 
thinking right! "Think" what you can do 
each day, for the glory of God, the benefit 
of your fellowmen and the ennobling of 
your own soul. 

"Think that day lost, whose low descend- 
ing sun 
Sees no good deed, no kindly action 
done." 



TROUBLES. 

A lady who heard us lecture on "Sun- 
shine," asked us if we ever had any trou- 
bles. Our reply was: "Not nearly so 
many as some people seem to have." 

A great many people have imaginary 
troubles. The poet says: "All seems in- 
fected, that the infected spy, as all seems 
yellow to a jaundiced eye." If you wear 
blue spectacles, everything you see will 
look blue. If you walk in your own 
shadow, your path will be dark; but, if you 
face the sun, the shadows will always be 
behind you! 

We remember a story of a melancholy 
old man who said with a sigh, half groan: 
"I have had a great many troubles in this 
world, but most of 'em never happened." 
They existed in his imagination. We 
never have that kind. 

Again there are many people who suf- 
fer from magnified troubles. They make 
mountains out of mole hills. They take 
little infelicities that sensible people do 
not waste time or thought upon, and they 
60 



Troubles. 61 

ponder them and magnify them until they 
shut all the sunshine out of their souls — 
we have no magnified troubles. 

There is also a large class who suffer 
from anticipated troubles — troubles that 
have not yet reached them, but which they 
feel quite sure are coming to them. "Bor- 
rowing 5 ' is a thing that should be avoided 
as much as possible, for there is always 
an interest to be paid. But borrowing 
money is sometimes necessary and the 
convenience and advantage is often found 
to be well worth the interest paid — but 
"borrowing trouble" is not only unneces- 
sary but altogether stupid. It does no 
good but much harm. It is stupid in the 
first place because it may never come to 
you; and in the second place, when it 
comes, it brings with it the grace we need 
to bear up under it. "As thy day is so 
shall thy strength be." If we undertake to 
carry it before it arrives, we have to do 
so in our own unaided strength and it is a 
heavy burden. There is good sense in the 
saying — 



62 Troubles. 

"Never trouble trouble, 

Till trouble troubles you; 
Never look for trouble — 
Let trouble look for you." 

We remember that, and have no antici- 
pated troubles. 

But are there not real troubles? Surely! 
but these do not destroy a Christian's 
peace and joy, because he knows they are 
not punative but disciplining; not sent to 
make him unhappy, but to make him 
nobler in character here and richer in joy 
forever. Hardships, difficulties and trials 
are essential to the development of charac- 
ter. 

Fair winds and smooth seas never yet 
developed a true sailor. He must meet 
storms, and gales and head winds and 
rough waves, and battle with them to de- 
velop true heroism. 

It is the nursling of the storm, the child 
of constant peril and the battler with head 
winds who comes forth with muscles as 
strong as steel, nerves as unbending as 
iron and resolution as firm as a rock, and 
who in gale or battle is always a hero. 



Troubles. 63 

No character amounts to anything that 
has not been in the furnace of trial; all 
truly great characters have been ennobled 
and developed by trials. 

St. James says: "Count it all joy when 
ye fall into diverse trials/' St. Peter says: 
"The trial of your faith is much more pre- 
cious than gold, though it be tried by fire." 

The trials of life bring an immediate 
benefit to God's believing children. They 
make the Bible more precious than ever. 
It was largely written to comfort the 
afflicted. It is full of "songs for the 
night." What a teacher the night is! We 
see no stars in the daylight. With what 
a luster the stars of God's promises shine 
on the night of affliction! And how pre- 
cious it makes the privilege of prayer! 

Communion with the sympathizing Sa- 
viour! with the God of all comfort. Jesus 
says to his beloved disciples: "In this 
world ye shall have tribulations, but be of 
good cheer; in me you shall have peace." 
But the greatest benefit of trial will be 
hereafter. St. Paul says: "These light 
afflictions which are but for a moment, 



64 Troubles. 

shall work out for us a far more exceeding 
and eternal weight of glory." Mark the 
superlative in this! Is it any wonder that 
he said "We glory in tribulations/' when 
he saw how they were working for his 
eternal joy? 

It is a good thing to get the conviction 
firmly and deeply fixed in our minds and 
hearts that there is not a bitter drop that 
God puts into the cup of our earthly life 
that is not a needed and wholesome tonic 
for the soul, prescribed by infinite wisdom 
and infinite love. 

What do we do when sick? We go to 
our physician and he looks at our tongues 
and feels our pulses, and says, "Yes, you 
are a good deal out of sorts, but I will 
give you something that will bring you 
around all right in a few days," and he 
writes a prescription, and as he hands it 
to us, he probably says, "This is not very 
pleasant to take, but it is just what your 
case demands." And we are quite likely 
to reply, "I don't care how unpleasant it 
is if it will work a cure," and we pay him 
for it and pay the druggist to put it up, 



Troubles. 65 

and we bring it home and put it in the 
glass of water according to directions and 
we hold our nose and down it goes with- 
out a murmur or complaint. 

We impose an affliction upon ourselves 
for which we have paid money, in the hope 
of a future benefit we expect to derive 
from it. Is not that the whole philosophy 
of medicine-taking? 

Why, then, should we ever murmur or 
complain of any bitterness in the cup of 
our present life when we know it is pre- 
scribed by an infallible physician, who 
never made a mistake in either the need 
of the patient or the nature of the pre- 
scription, and who prescribes it in infinite 
love. And what are the few bitter drops 
compared with the thousands of sweet and 
precious joys every hour poured into our 
cup? We read once a little poem that puts 
this in a true and striking light — 
"Lockman the slave of Talmi stood behind 

His master's table as he sat at meat, 
And oftentimes it pleased the Royal mind, 

With Lockman to divide some morsel 
sweet — 
It was his conceit. 



66 Troubles. 

One day, to feed him with a melon rind. 
Acid and bitter and unfit to eat; 

This with no scornful purpose or unkind 
But as a jest, and the King looked to see 
The slave's grimaces, but he looked in 
vain; 
For Lockman ate the melon placidly, 

Nor of its evil taste did once complain. 
It might have been, for all was said or 
done 
As sweet a fruit as ripens 'neath the sun! 
Then wonder at such patience came in- 
stead 
Of the light laughter for which Talmi 
plan'd. 
'You eat the thing and make no sign,' he 
said 
'You who are fed with dainties from my 
hand!' 
'Yea/ said the slave, 'it was my Lord's 
command 
That I should eat, and why should I 
complain, 
Who daily feed upon the fatness of the 
land? 



Troubles. 67 

Bitter or sweet, 'tis enough to me that 
Talmi gives it/ 
For this reply — the King was pleased to 
set his bondman free, 
Acknowledging a lesson learned there- 
by; 
God is my King! henceforth my soul shall 
greet 
With equal grace, his bitter and his 
sweet." 



RAINY DAYS. 

We were riding in a stagecoach not long 
since, when it began to rain, and a very 
pretty young lady passenger exclaimed 
sadly, "Oh my, it is raining !" We at once 
began reciting this little poem: 

"Ah! the dwellers of the town, 

How they sigh; 
When the cloud king shakes his crown 
And the pearls come pouring down — 

From the sky! 
And each moment of the shower 

Seems an hour; 
Yet the sweetest thing to see, 
If you ask the dripping tree, 
Or the harvest hoping swain, 

Is the rain. 
For the shower has its charms, 
Sweet and welcome to the farms, 
And they listen to its voice, 

And rejoice !" 
"Where did you get that?" said the 
young lady. "Oh! we picked it up in our 
travels and we always think of it when it 
rains." 

68 



Rainy Days. 69 

We should never complain of the rain. 
Think what an unspeakable blessing it is 
to the farmer and through him to the 
whole earth. 

Read the sixty-fifth Psalm an see with 
what sweet thoughts and words David 
listens to the rain. He looks upon it as 
a gracious visitation of God. "Thou visit- 
est the earth and watereth it, thou greatly 
enrichest with the river of God which is 
full of water." In the sea God has an inex- 
haustible supply. 

"Thou preparest them corn when thou 
hast so provided for it." [No rain, no 
corn.] 

"Thou waterest the ridges thereof abun- 
dantly, thou settlest the furrows thereof, 
thou makest it soft with showers!" [But 
for the rain the sun would bake the earth to 
the hardness of rock.] "Thou blesseth the 
springing thereof, thou crownest the year 
with thy goodness and thy paths drop fat- 
ness." 

"They drop upon the pastures of the wil- 
derness and the little hills rejoice on every 
side." [David has been a shepherd and he 



jo Rainy Days. 

knew what the rain did for the shepherd 
as well as the farmer.] 

"The pastures are clothed with flocks, 
the valleys also are covered with corn, they 
shout for joy; they also sing." That's the 
way to listen to the rain. 

What a wonderful book is the book of 
Psalms. How full of the inspiration of 
gratitude and praise. David exclaims: "O 
that men would praise the Lord for his 
goodness, for his wonderful works to the 
children of men!" He seemed astonished 
that a world so full of God's goodness 
should be so empty of praise. 

Luther, the great and brave reformer, 
who parted the clouds of the dark ages and 
let in the light of God's truth, and gave us 
the open Bible, was a great student of the 
Psalms and drew his courage and fortitude 
largely from that book. When his co- 
laborer, Melancthon, would get discour- 
aged, Luther would say: "Philip, let us 
read the Forty-sixth Psalm. "God is our 
refuge and strength, a very present help 
in trouble. Therefore we will not fear 
though the earth be removed and the 



Rainy Days. yi 

mountains be carried into the midst of the 
sea. The Lord of hosts is with us, the God 
of Jacob is our refuge." 

"I know what the devil threatens, 
Philip. I know he threatens to swallow 
me. Well, let him do it; let him do it, and 
by God's grace he will get such a stomach- 
ache and purging as he never had before." 

That was the spirit that carried that 
brave soul through his heroic labors and 
it was inspired by God's word. 

So when you hear anyone complain of 
the rain, tell them to read the Sixty-fifth 
Psalm. Let us think what blessings the 
rain is bringing and then we will sing with 
the poet Loveman: 

"The clouds of gray engulf the day 

And overwhelm the town; 
It is not raining rain to me — 

It's raining roses down. 
Here's health unto the happy, 

A fig for him who frets; 
It is not raining rain to me — 

It's raining violets" 



HOW TO TREAT CALUMNY. 

The man, who conscious of his own in- 
nocence, can be patient under false accusa- 
tions, and who can rise above the acrimony 
of a personal assault and give an answer 
to an assailant showing good nature or 
genial humor, has surely one of the ele- 
ments of a strong character. 

We remember the case of a young man, 
who many years ago was a member of 
our church in Philadelphia, and concern- 
ing whom some evil-minded person had 
circulated evil reports which we knew were 
untrue. We were quite indignant, and 
meeting him one day, we said: "John, why 
do you not answer those slanders they are 
circulating about you?" Smiling very 
sweetly, he replied: "Why, my dear Pas- 
tor, I want to get that great reward our 
dear Master has promised. 

"You surely remember His words, 

'Blessed are ye when men shall revile you 

and say all manner of evil against you 

falsely. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, 

72 



Hozv to Treat Calumny. 73 

for great is your reward in heaven'?" And 
the young man taught his pastor a lesson. 

It is related of our great and noble 
President Abraham Lincoln, that when 
someone told him that Mr. Stanton had 

said in anger, "Lincoln is a d d fool." 

Mr. Lincoln smiled and replied meekly, 
"Well, there must be something in it, for 
Stanton is generally right." 

Could anything more good-natured, 
modest or more witty have been said? 
"False praise can please and calumny af- 
fright 
None but the vicious or the hypocrite." 

An admirable story is told of Hon. 
Thomas B. Reed, of Maine, in many re- 
spects a very notable man. 

When he was a member of the House 
of Representatives at Washington, a mem- 
ber of the House from one of the Southern 
states made a speech in which there was a 
very bitter personal assault upon the gen- 
tleman from Maine. 

Reed listened to him patiently and smil- 
ingly and when the man had finished his 
speech and taken his seat, Mr. Reed rose 



74 How to Treat Calumny. 

and said: "Mr. Speaker! There are two 
classes of people I am anxious to stand 
well with. The first are my constituents, 
who sent me here; I desire them to feel 
that I am a true representative of their in- 
terests and rights. 

"I desire also to stand well with the 
members of this House, my fellow Repre- 
sentatives from other states of our Union; 
I desire them to feel that however I may 
differ from them in opinion or in my vote, 
I respect their rights and treat them with 
courtesy. 

"Now, nothing the gentleman has said, 
will affect the minds of my constituents, 
because they know me, and I feel also 
quite sure that nothing he has said will 
affect your minds, because — well, because 
you know him!" and he took his seat smil- 
ingly, and the House roared with merri- 
ment and his assailant looked cheap. 

But this true wisdom is not confined to 
the learned and great, sometimes the lowly 
possess it, being taught of God. 

"Aunt Hannah/' said a lady to her col- 
ored washer-woman, "Do you know that 



How to Treat Calumny. 75 

you have been accused of stealing?" "Oh, 
yes! I heard about it." "Well, you will 
not rest under it, will you?" Aunt Han- 
nah, raising herself from her work with a 
smile, replied: "De Lord knows I ain't stole 
nothin', and I knows I ain't, and life's too 
short to go proovin' and explainin' all de 
time, so I jes' goes on my way rejoicin'. 
Dey knows dey ain't tellin' de truth an' dey 
feels asham'd of it after a while. If I can 
please de Lord, dats enuf for me!" 

Could the wisest philosopher give a bet- 
ter reply? 

Well does the Psalmist say "The en- 
trance of Thy word giveth light, it giveth 
understanding to the simple." 



RIGHT VIEWS OF LIFE. 

We are all familiar with the verse of 
'Torn Moore:" 

"This world is all a fleeting show, 
For man's illusion given; 

Its smiles of joy, its tears of woe, 
Deceitful shine, deceitful flow, 
There's nothing true but Heaven." 

This poetry has a very devout and pious 
sound, but it does not contain a particle 
of either piety or good sense, but a very 
unjust reflection upon God. Such views 
of life are not only erroneous but mis- 
chievous. 

It is said Moore wrote this after having 
been jilted by his sweetheart. We think 
this not unlikely. Men in despair and in 
anger have often said very foolish and un- 
wise things. David tells us that he did — 
"I said in my haste that all men are liars" 
— which was entirely too sweeping an as- 
sertion. Although we heard of an old 
Scotch parson, who having read the Psalm 
containing these words in his pulpit service, 
paused and made this comment: "Ye said 
76 



Right Views of Life. yy 

it in your haste, did ye David? Well, if 
ye had lived in this day and in my parish, 
ye might have said it at your leisure !" 

Illusions are not to be charged to our 
Creator; they belong to us and grow out 
of an inexcusable ignorance and folly. 

To complain that life has no true joys, 
no real satisfactions, no noble and enno- 
bling employments, while a single creature 
remains on this planet, whom we can re- 
lieve by our bounty, assist by our coun- 
sel, or in any way help by our kindness, 
is to lament the loss of that which we pos- 
sess, and is just as irrational as it would 
be to perish with thirst with a cup in our 
hand, and a spring of pure water gushing 
up within easy reach. 

We once heard of a ship on the coast of 
South America, that had exhausted its 
supply of fresh water, and those on board 
were suffering greatly and they hoisted 
signals of distress. A passing ship hailed 
them and inquired, "What is the distress ?" 
They answered, "Perishing for want of 
water." What think you was the reply to 
this information? Simply this: "Dip it 



yS Right Views of Life. 

up! dip it up! You are in the mouth of 
the Amazon !" 

They were in the mouth of a river of 
fresh water nearly a hundred miles wide 
and did not know it. 

The refreshment they so sorely needed 
and for which they were so longing was 
flowing freely and copiously all around 
them. 

So to those who complain of the joyless- 
ness of life, we would say: "The waters of 
the purest refreshment and satisfaction are 
flowing freely and copiously all around 
you! You only need to dip it up, drink 
and be refreshed and happy." 

The reason why so many are melancholy 
and miserable even among the rich and 
cultivated is because their lives are a ster- 
ile desert of selfishness and unusefulness. 
Our cry to them is: "Up and shake this 
selfish sloth out of your souls! Up and do 
something useful and beneficent! Cease 
to be a mere leaf on the current of time, 
drifting without a path or a purpose !" 

Do something useful if it be nothing 
but to lift some little vine from the dust in 



Right Views of Life. 79 

which it is perishing and lead it to a trellis 
by which it may climb towards heaven. 

And if it be the vine of an immortal soul 
how grand the work! Help someone! 
Lift up some neglected or down-trodden 
soul and you will find life has a significance 
and joy of which you never before 
dreamed. 

There is no joy that flows into the soul 
like the joy of beneficence. A Persian poet 
says: "The joy of doing good is like the 
breeze of the evening to the cheek parched 
by the heat of the desert." 

Did you ever think of the etymology of 
words expressive of the greatest joy? 
"Transport" means carried beyond self. 
"Ecstacy" means lifted out of self. The 
selfish life is a blunder; the beneficent life 
the only true and blessed one. 

Christ says: "It is more blessed to give 
than to receive." 

"Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is 
perfect, for He maketh His sun to rise on 
the evil and the good and sendeth his rain 
on the just and on the unjust." 

But not only God's Book of Revelation, 



80 Right Views of Life. 

but the Book of Nature glows with the 
same beneficent lesson. 

Nothing was made for itself alone. The 
ocean receives the tribute of the rivers, 
but sends it up again in vapor to the 
clouds; these pour it out in refreshing 
showers upon the thirsty hills, and these 
send it down in fertilizing streams among 
the valleys. 

The planets draw their light from their 
great centers, but fling it out again in rays 
of brightness over the dark regions of 
space through which they roll. 

The trees draw from air and earth and 
sky to build themselves up, but give back 
freely blossom and fruit and shelter and 
shade. 

They all absorb to impart. And by this 
law of compensative beneficence all nature 
is filled with energy, purity and blessed- 
ness. The ocean rolls with crystal purity 
and beauty. The stars shine with undying 
splendor. The flowers bloom in perennial 
beauty. 

And the old earth, by this ceaseless flow 
of beneficence, through all her veins wears 



Right Viezvs of Life. 81 

on her brow the beauty and freshness of 
everlasting youth, and comes forth every 
springtide crowned with fresh flowers, 
adorned "as a bride for her husband." 
And when the ear of man catches this note 
of Nature's harmony and joy and his soul 
responds to it, he walks as one who 
marches to pleasant music and the labor 
of love becomes the elixir of life. 

"Lives of great men all remind us, 

We can make our lives sublime, 
And departing leave behind us, 

Footprints on the sands of time. 
Footprints that perhaps another 

Sailing o'er life's solemn main; 
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 

Seeing shall take heart again." 



THE CONVERSION OF SAUL. 

The conversion of a soul may be a more 
important event in the history of this 
world than the capture of a city or the 
founding of an empire, and since the Res- 
urrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and 
the descent of the Holy Spirit, on the day 
of Pentecost, there has been no more im- 
portant event in the history of our race 
than the conversion of Saul, of Tarsus, to 
Christianity. 

Viewed either as a wonderful illustra- 
tion of the grace and mercy of Christ, or 
as an unanswerable demonstration of the 
truth and divinity of Christianity or as an 
event most vitally affecting the welfare of 
the church and the world through all sub- 
sequent ages, it alike challenges wonder, 
admiration and gratitude. 

No mere man has ever before or since 
filled so large a space in the history of hu- 
man redemption or left so deep, so last- 
ing and so blessed an -impression upon the 
ages. 

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the great- 

82 



The Conversion of Saul. 83 

est moral power that has ever operated 
on earth. St. Paul was its greatest ex- 
pounder, example and apostle. 

To anyone at all familiar with the mar- 
velous labors, wonderful sacrifices, the he- 
roic sufferings and matchless achievements 
of this most extraordinary man, the spec- 
tacle of this bitter and dreaded persecutor 
of Christians being led blind through the 
gates of Damascus a prisoner of Christ. A 
captive and convert to the Christianity he 
came to destroy; a trophy of the mercy 
and grace of Him whose name he had blas- 
phemed, is a picture morally sublime; for, 
from the hour of his conversion and conse- 
cration to the cause of Christ, to the hour 
of his triumphant death, he was engaged 
in labors which none but one of his un- 
ceasing love and zeal could have ever per- 
formed. One hardly knows which most 
to admire, the sweetness and cheerfulness 
of his spirit, the magnitude of his labors, 
the greatness of his success, or the heroism 
of his death. The history of the world pre- 
sents no match for either. 

In a day when there were no railroads 



84 The Conversion of Saul. 

or steamships or telegraphs, he extended 
his personal influence over the whole 
Roman empire and was the flaming herald 
of the Gospel to the whole civilized world 
of that day. 

The principal churches of the Old 
World were founded by his personal min- 
istry, and the principal disputes of these 
churches were discused and determined by 
his radiant pen. 

There is not found in the records of 
time, the name of any other man who 
accomplished so much for truth, for right- 
eousness, for the moral and spiritual uplift 
of the human race as did this man. 

And he finished his wonderful career 
without a falter in his pace or a stain 
upon his record. When at last he saw the 
sword of Nero hanging as by a thread 
above his devoted head — with a soul un- 
moved by fear — and a faith undimmed by a 
cloud, he calmly wrote to his beloved 
Timothy these glorious words: "The time 
of my departure is at hand; I am now 
ready to be offered. I have fought a good 
fight, I have finished my course, I have 



The Conversion of Saul. 85 

kept the faith and henceforth there is laid 
up for me a crown of Righteousness which 
the Lord, the Righteous Judge, will give 
me in that day and not to me only, but to 
all who love his appearing/' 

Glorious old hero! He was the noblest 
trophy of the cross and its grandest 
apostle. No urn contains his ashes; no 
marble commemorates his virtues, but 
the divine sentiments of his enlightened 
and exalted intellect and noble heart glow 
forever in his priceless epistles, embalmed 
in this imperishable Book of God and will 
fire the hearts of the Christian ministry and 
quicken the faith and zeal of the Christian 
church while the earth endures. 

His name, his deeds, his inspired words, 
recorded in this divine volume, will remain 
forever the unanswerable demonstration 
of the truth and divinity of the Christian 
religion. 

Delusion and falsehood could never 
have formed such a character, it is too 
true, too sincere, too unselfish, too beau- 
tiful, too Godlike to be traced to any but 
a divine source. The schools of science 



86 The Conversion of Saul. 

cannot match it. The halls of philosophy- 
present no peer to it. It stands alone — 
unique, sublime — the splendid demonstra- 
tion of what the great grace and power of 
Christ can bring out of our depraved hu- 
manity. 

"Lord thou wilt surely greet 
Souls for thy service meet; 

No bars of brass can keep Thine own 
from Thee, 
Oh! vainly earth and hell, 
Guard their grand captives well 

Against the glimpses of Thy radiancy; 
Thou streamest on their startled eyes, 
And makest them Thine own by some di- 
vine surprise. 
"Forth from the league of hell 
Wherein Thy foemen dwell, 

The glorious captains of Thy host Thou 
takest; 
The mighty souls that came 
To quench the sacred flame, 

The bearers of the torch Thou makest; 
And hands that vex'd Thy people most 
Now waive the greenest palms amid the 
martyr host. 



The Conversion of Saul. 87 

"The light not vainly glowed, 
On that Damascus road, 

Oh! not in vain that voice divine was 

heard; 
The foeman was o'erthrown, 
The champion made Thine own, 

When night against Thee in hot haste 

he spur'd; 
Then streamed forth, the world to win, 
That mighty flame of love, where hate had 

been." 



PAUL'S EULOGY OF DAVID. 

In an address made by St. Paul at An- 
tioch, recorded in the thirteenth chapter 
of the "Acts" of the Apostles, is this brief 
but significant reference to the life of Da- 
vid, Israel's grandest monarch: "David, 
after he had served his own generation by 
the will of God, fell on sleep." This is the 
eulogy which the greatest man of the new 
dispensation pronounces over one of the 
grandest men of the old. It is the epitaph 
which Paul writes on the tomb of David. 
It is brief but most comprehensive, and it 
is as just as it is beautiful. Time will not 
erase it; eternity will not reverse it! 

Two things only Paul tells us about Da- 
vid: First, that he served his own genera- 
tion according to the will of God. Sec- 
ondly, that he then "fell on sleep." We all 
know what this last expression means. 
That deep, solemn, mysterious sleep which 
God has decreed that all his earthly chil- 
dren shall , pass through into the future 
life — the sleep of death. It means simply 
that "he died." After every name in his- 

88 



Paul's Eulogy of David. 89 

tory stands that brief, but significant rec- 
ord — "and he died." So one of these days, 
not far distant, men will write after our 
names — "and he died." The fact should 
be faced and pondered, but it need not be 
feared. 

Thank God, with the Bible in our hands 
— we know that "dust thou art, to dust 
returneth" was not written of the soul. 

God's blessed Book teaches us how to 
live so that death shall be no calamity but 
an unspeakable benediction; so that we 
can pass through its iron gate as through 
an arch of triumph to a throne and a 
crown. 

Brief as is Paul's eulogy, it gives us a 
clew to a life that will not only disarm 
death of all its terrors, but will enrich our 
eternity with imperishable satisfactions, for 
it does not merely tell us that David died, 
but something infinitely more interesting 
and important, namely, that David had 
truly lived. Lived for his generation; 
lived for the good of his country and his 
race; lived according to the will of God. 

It is this that makes a man's name inter- 



90 Paul's Eulogy of David. 

esting to posterity, that embalms it in the 
loving reverence and memory of mankind; 
not the common fact that he died, but the 
rarer and grander fact that he had truly 
lived. 

The poet sings truly who says: 
"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, 

not breaths; 
In feelings, not in figures on a dial; 
We should count life by heart-throbs, he 

most lives 
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts 
the best." 

And what a life did David live! What 
a memorable character and career were 
his! How extraordinary, how noble, how 
brilliant! Peasant! Hero! Courtier! Poet! 
Prophet! Prince and King! 

He was the greatest military captain of 
his age. The noblest monarch Israel ever 
had — and the poet and prophet of all time. 
From the hour when he came forth from 
his shepherd life into public view and by 
his manly and patriotic spirit, his muscular 
arm, and his sublime faith in God, made 
the giant of the Phillistine host "bite the 



Paul's Eulogy of David. 91 

dust," until the hour when full of days and 
riches and honors he resigned the scepter 
of a great empire to his son, and his spirit 
to his God, his days had been filled with 
usefulness and honor. 

This peerless son of Jesse had so many 
splendid qualities of mind and heart, so 
many noble and generous traits of charac- 
ter and wrought so grand a work for his 
country, his generation and indeed for all 
mankind, for his sacred songs will echo 
through all the corridors of time, that he 
rides the heavens of Jewish history like a 
Sun. 

Some few spots there are, it is true, 
upon the disk of that sun which dim some 
of its splendor, but every fairminded 
student of sacred history will admit, we 
firmly believe, that no sweeter, nobler, 
braver or manlier man ever lived upon this 
planet than David, the son of Jesse, the 
brave leader of the Judean Army and the 
sweet singer of Israel and of the ages. 



SOLOMON'S EXPERIMENT. 

There never has been made on this 
planet, in all the ages, a more thorough 
and exhaustive experiment as to the power 
of material things to satisfy the mind and 
heart of man, as was made by Solomon, 
King of Judea. No other man can ever 
hope to have such resources and oppor- 
tunity for such a trial as had this rich and 
idolized Jewish monarch. 

Here is the testimony of an Oriental 
King who had the finest position, the am- 
plest resources, and the most splendid op- 
portunity to test the power of the riches 
and the pleasures of this world to yield 
happiness, and he did test them to their 
utmost capacity and this is what he has 
put upon record: 

"I said in my heart, go to now. I will 
prove thee with mirth; therefore, enjoy 
pleasure. 

"I sought in my heart to give myself 
into wine and to lay hold on folly, that I 
might see what was that good for the sons 
92 



Solomon's Experiment. 93 

of man which they should do under heaven 
all the days of their life. 

"I made me great works. I builded me 
houses. I planted me vineyards. I made 
me gardens and orchards and I planted 
me trees in them of all kinds of fruits. I 
made me pools of water to water the trees 
therewith. 

"I got me men servants and maidens 
and had servants born in the house. 

"Also I had great possessions of great 
and small cattle above all that were in 
Jerusalem before me. 

"I gathered me also silver and gold and 
the peculiar treasures of kings and of the 
provinces. 

"I got me men singers and women, 
singers and musical instruments and that 
of all sorts. 

"So I was great and increased more than 
all that were in Jerusalem before me, and 
whatsoever my mind and heart desired, I 
kept not from them. I withheld not my 
heart from any joy. 

"Then I looked on all the works my 
hands had wrought and on all the labor 



94 Solomon's Experiment. 

I had labored to do, and behold all was 
vanity and vexation of spirit, and there 
was no profit under the sun." 

Surely this was a thorough and wonder- 
ful experiment and a most remarkable tes- 
timony as to the result of it all. And it 
has been corroborated by the testimony of 
the whole world. 

Lord Chesterfield, one of the most fa- 
vored and admired worldlings, says: "I 
now read Solomon with a sort of sympa- 
thetic feeling. I have been as wicked and 
vain, though not as wise as he, but now 
at last wise enough to attest the truth of 
his reflection that all is "vanity and vexa- 
tion of spirit." 

And kings, warriors, statesmen, poets, 
orators, and scholars without number, 
have confirmed the verdict of Solomon, 
and confessed the truth that this world has 
nothing that can satisfy the soul estranged 
from God. 

God himself has written in a single verse 
in the Bible the whole history of human 
folly and unhappiness: "They have com- 
mitted two evils — they have forsaken me 



Solomon s Experiment. 95 

the fountain of living waters and hewed 
them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can 
hold no water." (Jer. 2:13 v.) That is the 
whole story of the unhappiness of mankind 
for six thousand years. 

The soul of man has wants too great, 
and wounds too deep, and aspirations and 
longings too high, for this poor perishing 
world to satisfy. 

Bring all the physical and intellectual 
universe and lay it at the feet of man, and 
his soul would not be satisfied, he would 
be poor and miserable without God. And 
the whole irreligious and unhappy world 
has been compelled to confess it. And all 
who have come back to God have con- 
firmed the testimony and have come say- 
ing: 

"People of the living God, 

I have sought the world around; 

Paths of sin and sorrow trod, 

Peace and comfort nowhere found. 

Now to you my spirit turns, 
Turns a fugitive unblest — 

Brethren, where your altars burn 
O, receive me unto rest." 



96 Solomon's Experiment. 

And what has been the result of their 
coming back to God? Have these return- 
ing wanderers found the rest and peace 
they came seeking? Every one of them! 

In the history of our race for two thou- 
sand years there has not been found a sin- 
gle soul who came to Christ and failed to 
find the peace and rest they sought. 

They came guilty and found pardon! 

The came polluted and found purity! 

They came troubled and found peace! 

They came dying and found eternal life! 

And this is their testimony: 
"I heard the voice of Jesus say, 

Behold I freely give, 
The living water, thirsty one, 

Stoop down and drink and live ; 
I came to Jesus and I drank 

Of that life-giving stream, 
My thirst was quenched, my soul revived, 

And now I live in Him." 



PRAYER— ITS SUBLIMITY AND 
PRECIOUSNESS. 

Let us suppose that prayer to God was 
unknown among mankind; that we had a 
much less perfect Revelation than we have 
now; one that gave us some conception 
of God's holiness and His hatred of sin, 
and of our own guilt and misery, but no 
idea of any way of access to God's ear or 
his throne. 

What think you would be the effect, 
under such circumstances, of a proclama- 
tion made from the throne of God, made 
convincingly to the whole world that on a 
given day God would hear prayer, that he 
knew our condition and desired to help 
us, and that He had found a way by which 
He could forgive our sins and deliver us 
from all our misery without compromising 
His own holiness, and that supplications 
made on conditions perfectly reasonable 
and practical would secure for the suppli- 
cant not only pardon and peace here and 
now, but would avail for his blessedness 
and joy through eternal ages. 
97 



98 Prayer — /fa Sublimity and Preciousness. 

What amazement and exultation would 
such a proclamation spread through the 
world? How would the hours and min- 
utes preceding that day be counted? How 
would the friends of the sick and dying, 
by virtue of medicine and the tenderest 
care, try to preserve the flickering flame 
of life, that the dying beloved one might 
pray before they departed? How would 
the aged and despairing who had longed 
for death seek to prolong life until that 
auspicious morning? Who could sleep the 
night preceding such a day? And what a 
sight would the sun of that day witness 
in its course around the globe, of pros- 
trate, grateful and adoring millions ? 

Such in all probability would be the 
efifect of novelty in a privilege, which now, 
because always at our command, is reluc- 
tantly improved by many and utterly neg- 
lected by most. 

There is nothing so senseless and stupid, 
as well as guilty, as sin. A lost soul would 
give worlds, did it possess them, to be 
placed for a single hour in the probationary 
position of a living sinner. 



Prayer — Its Sublimity and Preciousness. 99 

But independent of such illustrations, to 
what thoughtful mind does not prayer pre- 
sent itself as one of the most wonderful, 
most precious and most sublime of all 
things known to man. We speak justly of 
many of the achievements of the human 
mind as being sublime. 

One reads the results of modern astron- 
omy and bows before the grandeur of the 
human intellect. To contemplate the 
mind of man soaring away into the infinite 
depths of space and bringing to light new 
worlds and new systems of worlds, and 
marking their order, their circuits and their 
changes is surely sublime. 

Kepler, the devout German astronomer, 
says: "Here I sit in the center of light, a 
far-ruling king, thinking God's thoughts 
over after Him/' So the subjection of all 
the great forces of nature — wind, water, 
fire and electricity — to the control of man 
is truly sublime. 

To see man harnessing them to all his 
enterprises; making them toil like slaves 
in his service; weaving his robes; moulding 
his iron and steel; driving his trains sixty 



ioo Prayer — Its Sublimity and Preciousness. 

miles an hour across the continent; and 
his ships against wind and tide across the 
ocean; sending his messages swift as the 
arrows of light over the mountains, under 
the sea and now through the trackless air 
— surely this is sublime. 

But prayer is more sublime than all the 
achievements of science and art. Prayer 
sweeps by all suns and stars and systems 
and worlds, and stops not until it folds its 
zvings at the very throne of God. 

Prayer passes by all subordinates; forces 
and lays hold of omnipotence itself. 

Prayer is swifter than the wind; swifter 
than light; swifter than the electric flame. 
It is as swift as thought; it whispers on 
earth and is instantly heard in heaven. 

Prayer controls the mightiest forces in 
the universe and controls them without 
the clatter and noise of material mechan- 
ism. 

Go into one of our great modern fac- 
tories and you see immense power in ac- 
tion, but amid the mighty "whirr" and 
"rattle" of the vast mechanism you can 
hardly hear a word spoken to you. But go 



Prayer — Its Sublimity and Preciousness. 101 

into the chamber of the Man of Prayer, 
and you see a solitary man kneeling in si- 
lence. There may be a slight movement 
of his lips; a whisper may possibly escape 
from them; a tear may tremble upon his 
eyelashes. That is about all — and yet that 
man is moving the arm that moves the 
world and upholds the universe. 

Surely there is nothing so sublime, 
nothing so wonderful, nothing so precious 
as prayer. 

God made man for this intercourse and 
fellowship with Himself. 

The highest needs and desires of man's 
moral nature can find their satisfaction 
and consolation nowhere else. 

Prayer fosters and develops the noblest 
graces of the human soul. It awakens hu- 
mility by teaching man his dependence 
upon God. It calls forth gratitude and 
praise by connecting all our mercies and 
blessings with God's gracious hands. It 
quickens love by bringing us in close and 
devout fellowship with the great heart of 
infinite love. It calls forth both faith and 



102 Prayer — Its Sublimity and Preciousness. 

hope by showing us how true and precious 
are the promises of God. 

Indeed there is no holy affection or 
grace of the soul with which prayer is not 
congenial. There is only one thing with 
which prayer will not agree, and that is 
sin. Sin cannot live in the atmosphere of 
prayer. It has been truly and strikingly 
said that "prayer will either make a man 
quit sinning or sin will make a man quit 
praying/' This is true and shows its heav- 
enly spirit and origin. In addition to all 
this there is the wonderful and blessed 
power of Intercessory Prayer. 

We are by faith in Christ made "kings 
and priests unto God." The great work 
of the priest was "Intercession for others." 
All God's children have "influence at 
court." They can do more for their chil- 
dren and friends at God's throne than any- 
where else. 

Let us all remember the noble words of 
Tennyson: 



Prayer — Its Sublimity and Preeiousness. 103 

"More things are wrought by prayer 
Than the world dreams of, wherefore let 

thy voice 
Rise like a fountain for me, night and day ; 
For what are men better than sheep or 

goats 
That nourish a blind life within the brain; 
If, knowing God, they lift not their hands 

in prayer, 
Both for themselves and those who call 

them friends. 
For so, the whole round earth is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God/' 



THE BROOK AND THE POOL. 
An Allegory. 

Do you see that little brook yonder 
coming down the mountain side? How it 
glistens! how it shines! How it gleams 
and seems to laugh as it leaps over the 
rocky obstructions that try to impede its 
course. It is passing a stagnant pool and 
I think I hear a dialogue like this: 

"Whither away Master Brooklet, in such 
a hurry ?" The brook replies: "I am go- 
ing to the river with this cup of cold water 
God has given me." Pool: "Better not 
be too generous; it is likely to be a hot 
summer and you will need it yourself be- 
fore the season is over." Brook: "Oh, 
yes! I know, life is uncertain and short at 
best, but I want to live while I live and 
do all the good I can." So on it went sing- 
ing in its active and useful course. Every- 
thing seemed to welcome and bless it. 
The trees crowded up to drink at its brink 
and to spread their sheltering branches 
over it. 

The birds came to sip its pure stream 

104 



The Brook and the Pool. 105 

and to sing its praises in the overhanging 
boughs. 

The cattle came to drink of its pure and 
refreshing water and stood knee-deep in 
its cool ripples in the hot and sultry noon- 
tide. 

The farmer listened with pleasure to its 
music as it flowed by his dooryard, where 
he sat with bare head, under the shade of 
the old elm. And he chuckled with delight 
as he saw his ducks dive and swim and 
revel in its sparkling current. 

Thus it went on its beneficent way bless- 
ing and blessed of all. It bore its full cup 
to the river and poured it out freely and 
generously, and the river carried it rap- 
idly to the sea. The sun smiled upon the 
sea and the sea sent up its vapor like in- 
cense to the clouds, and the winds of 
heaven bore the clouds away to the moun- 
tain that gave the brooklet birth and there 
they tipped their brimming cups and 
poured their gracious burden out upon 
mountain and valley and thus God saw to 
it that the mountain fountain should never 
run dry and the valleys be kept green and 



io6 The Brook and the Pool, 

fertile and the constantly replenished ocean 
became the nursing mother of all the liv- 
ing things upon the face of the earth. 

But what became of the stagnant pool? 
It received the rains and dews of heaven, 
but let not a single drop escape; no outlet, 
no current of generosity or usefulness 
stirred its selfish bosom; in its inglorious 
inactivity it grew sickly and pestilential. 

The cattle refused to drink of it; the 
evening breezes, sweeping over it, kissed 
it by mistake and caught its malaria in 
their wings and bore contagion instead of 
health through all the region round; the 
farmer and his family got the "chills and 
fever," and in disgust left its vicinity and 
finally God, in mercy, smote it with fiercer 
beams of the sun and dried it up forever. 

Is it not one of the most amazing things 
under the sun that with such a picture be- 
fore their eyes that rational beings should 
imitate this example of acquisition, reten- 
tion and stagnation? 

And yet there are thousands of men who 
do it. They drop every dollar that comes 



The Brook and the Pool. 107 

into their possession into a purse of parsi- 
mony and selfishly keep it there. 

As we heard it said by a wit, "They 
make all they can and 'can' all they 
make," and the weight of every added dol- 
lar at the bottom of their purse draws 
tighter the puckering strings at the top 
where the man's soul keeps g~uard. And 
as the purse grows larger the soul grows 
smaller, and when the man dies he has 
to leave the big purse behind him, and has 
nothing to carry into eternity but a little 
niggardly and polluted soul; and there are 
those who look on to such a career of self- 
ishness and call it "success." They say: 
"He was a very successful man, he left a 
large fortune." Oh, yes! he "left it" and 
he got badly "left" himself. We were not 
sent into this life to make big purses and 
little souls, we were placed here to enlarge 
and ennoble the soul; and if it takes every 
dollar to do it, it is money well and wisely 
spent. All we can take out of life is the 
soul. All the coveted prizes of earth drop 
from the hands of men when they reach 
the gate of death. 



io8 The Brook and the Pool. 

The crowns of kings! The medals of 
warriors! The diplomas of scholars and 
the purses of the rich all drop from human 
hands then! But if we have made the soul 
broad and sweet and noble and Christ-like, 
we have gained the true prize of life. We 
can go through the gate of death in tri- 
umph; we will be welcomed at the gates 
of life with joy. 

"That man may breathe but never lives, 
Who much receives and nothing gives; 
Whom none can praise, whom none can 

thank, 
Creations blot, creations blank. 

"But he who marks his radiant way 
With generous acts from day to day, 
Treads the same path his Saviour trod — 
The path to glory and to God." 



HOME. 

Someone has said that "home," 
"mother," and "heaven" are the three 
sweetest words in the English tongue. 
And who that has enjoyed the sunshine 
of a happy home, or known the holy and 
blessed love of a mother, or hopes for rest 
at last in heaven but will respond to the 
truth and beauty of the sentiment. 

The sweetest spot on earth is a happy 
home and the sweetest conception of 
heaven is found in Christ's words, "Our 
Father's House." 

Home is as old as the human race and 
it will be as lasting. No institution of civi- 
lized humanity has proved so impervious 
to all the assaults of earth and time. All 
attempts to destroy its sacredness, to im- 
prove its simplicity or to supersede it by 
something better, have signally failed. 
From the dawn of human history to the 
present hour it has bravely and steadfastly 
resisted all the storms that have beat upon 
it, and in its divine fitness, naturalness and 
blessedness has triumphed over all its 
rivals. 

109 



no Home. 

Mankind has everywhere found that of 
all circles of social life for either happiness 
or usefulness none can compare with the 
home — none so natural in origin, so simple 
in structure and so perfectly meeting the 
needs of man's heart and forming such a 
sweet school and sanctuary for childhood. 

Indeed, so pure and satisfying arte its 
joys, and so blessed and far-reaching its 
influence upon the individual and the na- 
tion that the power to create a happy 
home ought to be ranked above all the 
creative faculties of man, and the man who 
out of the materials found in this changing 
and selfish world, creates the sweet Eden 
of a happy home, should be recognized as 
one of the world's greatest benefactors 
and the nation's best citizens, for the na- 
tion will ever be as are its homes and the 
highest of all national ideals is a nation of 
happy Christian homes. 

And it should be the patriotic ambition 
of every American, sooner or later, to 
found a home and to make it by God's 
blessing, one of the purest, brightest, 
sweetest spots upon the planet. 



Home, 1 1 1 

And there is not a home in the land so 
humble but it may be garnished by tidi- 
ness, beautified by taste, whitened by 
cleanliness, enlivened by industry, lighted 
up with intelligence and above all, made 
glowing and warm and beautiful with 
cheerfulness and love. 

Above all things love, for nothing can 
atone for its absence. It is love that colors 
with a divine radiance the common things 
of life, that makes the humblest home 
beautiful, and the cottage of the poor as 
bright as the palace of the rich. 

Few stop to mark the influence of a 
happy home upon the character as well as 
the happiness of children. 

Isaac Taylor, one of the most sensible 
of English writers, says: "The memory 
of a thoroughly happy childhood, other 
advantages not wanting, is the very best 
preparation, moral and intellectual, with 
which to encounter the duties and cares of 
real life. A sunshiny childhood is an 
auspicious inheritance with which, as a 
fund, to begin trading in practical wisdom 
and active goodness. 



H2 Home. 

"It is a great thing," he says, "to have 
known by experience that tranquil tem- 
perate felicity is actually attainable on 
earth, and we would think so if we knew 
how many had pursued a reckless course, 
because they had early learned to think 
of happines as a chimera and momentary 
gratifications, the only substitute placed 
within the reach of man." 

An inheritance of wealth is rarely a bles- 
sing, often a curse, but the memory of a 
sunshiny childhood cannot be otherwise 
than a great blessing. 

They cannot contrast its sweet and in- 
nocent joys with the haunts of vice and 
dissipation without disgust. 

They cannot think of its pure and satis- 
fying delights without feeling the stimulus 
of a holy and noble ambition to gather 
round, themselves such a circle of inno- 
cence, intelligence, cheerfulness and love, 
as they knew and enjoyed in the sweet 
home of their childhood. 

Let parents ponder this thought and do 
all in their power to make home a happy 
place for their children; not to make it 



Home. 113 

too serious and dull, but to enter into their 
children's joys, and cater for their inno- 
cent amusement and recreation as well as 
for their more serious instruction. 

Let them cultivate domestic habits and 
tastes; the almost slavish devotions to 
business on the part of many husbands and 
fathers of this day is greatly to be deplored. 

Many of them seem to write over the 
gates of their minds and hearts as they do 
over the gates of their factories — 

"No admittance except on business," 
and outraged nature takes them at their 
word, and while they become good 
"bankers," "directors," "trustees," they 
become very poor husbands and fathers. 

They are so little at home that their own 
children hardly know them. A bright lad 
asked a certain favor of an uncle whom he 
knew intimately. The uncle said: "Jack, 
why do you not ask your father for it?" 
The lad promptly and smilingly replied: 
"Oh! I don't feel sufficiently acquainted 
with him." This is surely all wrong; there 
is something better in life than for a man 



ii4 Home. 

to become a mere "money-making ma- 
chine" or slave. 

We knew a very busy and successful 
business man in Philadelphia some years 
ago who would never allow his business 
to interfere with his domestic love and 
happiness; who made it a habit, even in 
his busiest season, always to go home and 
dine with his wife and children. He said 
he lived for something besides "money- 
making/ ' 

We met him one day on his return from 
his midday meal. He was looking very radi- 
ant and happy, his face was full of dimples, 
and in every dimple sat a smile, as we 
took the grasp of his friendly hand. We 
said: "What good fortune has just hap- 
pened you?" "What do you mean?" 
said he. "Why," said I, "you are looking 
so sunny, so bright and happy!" "I was 
not conscious of it," said he, "but I think 
I can explain: "As I left my home just 
now, I turned a sideward glance and my 
eyes saw a most pleasing picture — two 
windows full of faces all my own." 

Wife and children, not satisfied with giv- 



Home. 115 

ing him a kiss and "good-bye" in the din- 
ing room, had hastened to the front win- 
dows to throw one more "kiss" as he went 
back to business, and the sweet and beau- 
tiful picture had photo'd itself upon his 
mind and heart and was beaming through 
his eyes and face. That was all — some- 
thing very simple, but very delightful, but 
known to too few. 

We heard of another "business man/' 
who after the most absolute devotion to 
his business, through the rascality of 
others, failed and had to retire from his 
business. An intimate friend said to him: 
"Well! what do you propose doing now?" 
"I think," said he, smiling, "I will now go 
home and cultivate the acquaintance of my 
family." 

Let husbands not only cultivate domes- 
tic tastes and habits, but also resolve to 
bring to the household altar the tribute of 
a sweet and loving temper. 

It was said of a certain man that he was 
"an angel in the street, a saint in church, 
but a devil at home." It is to be hoped 
that there are but few as bad as that; but 



n6 Home. 

there are far too many who, as friends and 
neighbors, are models of courtesy and 
kindness, because they take pains to be so; 
but, who alas! take too little pains to be 
so in their own homes; who, if not habitu- 
ally gloomy and surly, are so capricious 
in their moods and tenses that a weekly 
record of their domestic life would read 
like a weather page in the old Farmer's 
Almanac: 

Monday — very pleasant. 

Tuesday — cool. 

Wednesday — cloudy. 

Thursday — a little more pleasant. 

Friday — blustery. 

Saturday — threatening; look out for 
squalls. 

Such changeable moods are a sad draw- 
back upon the sunshine of the domestic 
circle. 

If there be anything in us that is sad and 
gloomy, sour and repulsive, that we can- 
not repress, but must come out, by all means 
let it out in the open air and never bring it 
home to mar the joys of those whom we 
should love better than all others, and 



Home. 117 

spoil the peaceful atmosphere of our own 
resting place. 

Better not let it out anywhere unless 
for the reason given by an old Quaker who 
heard a man swearing and said to him: 
"That's right, my man! That's right, out 
with it; thee never can get into heaven 
with that in thee/' 

The ancients, when they sacrificed to 
the Nuptial Juno, to whom they gave the 
superintendence of marriage, always took 
the gall out of the sacrificial victim and cast 
it behind the altar, thereby signifying that 
there should be no bitterness in the mar- 
riage relationship. 

And in their conjugal allegories they 
always represented Mercury as standing 
beside Venus. 

Mercury was the God of eloquence and 
of music and also the "messenger god." 

The significance of putting him beside 
the goddess of love was to teach that sweet 
tones, fair words, a readiness to serve, 
should always unite with love in the mar- 
riage relation. 



n8 Home, 

A beautiful lesson and worthy of per- 
petual remembrance: 

"If solid happiness you prize 
Within your breast the jewel lies, 

And they are fools who roam; 
The world has nothing to bestow — 
From your own self, the bliss must flow, 

And that dear hut — your home." 



THE MOTHER AND BABE. 

We once heard a popular lecturer, who 
was very zealously advocating the wom- 
an's "suffrage" movement, speak quite 
contemptuously of woman's domestic 
sphere, calling it "a sphere of babies and 
buttons." 

When we heard this sneer at the "ba- 
bies," we could not resist the impression 
that the speaker was much nearer being a 
sensational idiot than a social philosopher, 
for it is just the babe that gives the home 
its sublime significance and woman her 
grandest and most useful mission. 

The mother and her babe are the very 
salt of our civilization, and the saviours of 
our social order. 

The human infant comes into this life 
the feeblest of feeble things; it knows 
nothing, can do nothing, and would perish 
upon the spot of its birth but for the kindly 
care of others. 

But within that helpless body is an im- 
mortal soul upon which God has stamped 

119 



120 The Mother and Babe. 

the seal of infinite expansion and progres- 
sion. 

Omniscience only knows the greatness 
of mind, the nobility of character and the 
splendor of destiny that infant soul may 
reach if properly trained and developed. 

And this is the sublime work for which 
God has endowed the mother above all 
others. 

God seems very plainly to say by the 
order of his Providence: "I cannot en- 
trust to man the difficult, the delicate, and 
the vastly important work of training the 
infant soul. Man must be out upon the 
rough sea of life, struggling for the suste- 
nance for himself and family; he is not 
only too much occupied by this work, but 
he becomes too rough and too imperious 
in his battle with the elements for so deli- 
cate a task. I will fit woman for it." 

Therefore infinite wisdom and infinite 
love pillows the infant's head upon wom- 
an's breast, where it may feel and hear a 
heart beating with patience, tenderness 
and love; love as unselfish as an angel's, 
and as undying as the light of the stars. 



The Mother and Babe. 121 

And that mother by the very constitu- 
tion of her nature and by her domestic 
office holds the key of the human soul, and 
she it is who stamps the coin of human 
character and makes the being, who would 
be a savage but for her care, a noble Chris- 
tian man or woman. 

But to successfully accomplish this 
grand work she must give to the training 
of her babe the devotion of her whole 
heart and life. 

She should let nothing divert her from 
her important and sublime mission. No 
social functions, no church demands, 
should be allowed to rob her babe of that 
maternal oversight and care which she, 
better than any other, and better than all 
others, can give it. 

And if she will do this, great will be her 
honor and reward! She will be something 
more than the ornament of her sex; she 
will be the benefactress of the world! 

For what gifts can be bestowed upon 
humanity greater than the gift of a truly 
great and noble man or woman? 



122 The Mother and Babe. 

"Oh! that we had more judges like Sam- 
uel !" exclaimed one. "We should," was 
the reply, "if we had more Hannah's!" 

It has become an axiom of history that 
"Great men have great mothers." 

At a banquet given at the Hague to our 
minister, the Hon. John Adams, someone 
offered a toast complimenting his son and 
secretary, John Quincy Adams, who at 
thirteen years of age had translated "Tele- 
machus" from the French into English in 
scholarly style. In replying to the toast, 
John Adams simply said: "John Quincy 
has a mother! John Quincy has a mother!" 
When that remarkable woman, Abigail 
Adams, died, the letters she had written 
to her son, John Quincy, were gathered 
into a little volume and circulated among 
friends. 

Governor Briggs, of Massachusetts, was 
a member of the National House of Rep- 
resentatives at the time and a copy of the 
little book came into his hands, and he 
said: "As I read these letters I saw the 
secret of this man's greatness; I could see 
the hand at work moulding his noble char- 



The Mother and Babe. 123 

acter. I never read such letters. I was 
so impressed that I looked across the 
chamber and saw the venerable and grand 
old man sitting at his desk, and the House 
not yet being called to order, I went over 
to him with the book in my hand, but the 
hand behind my back, and laying the other 
hand lovingly upon his shoulder, I said: 
"Mr. Adams, I have just found out who 
made your "What do you mean?" re- 
plied he pleasantly. Bringing the book 
forward, I said: "I have just been reading 
these letters from your mother.'' Spring- 
ing to his feet like a boy, his eyes beaming 
with intelligence and affection, he ex- 
claimed: "Oh, yes sir! I understand you 
now, I understand you perfectly. Yes sir, 
all that I am, all that I have been enabled 
to do for my country or my generation, 
I owe to the influence of that most excel- 
lent parent." 

God's word declares: "Her children 
shall rise up to call her blessed, her own 
works shall praise her in the gates." 



124 The Mother and Babe. 

O, wondrous power! how little under- 
stood, 
Entrusted to the mother's mind alone; 
To fashion genius, from the soul for good, 
Inspire a West, or train a Washington. 

— Mrs. Hale. 



BOOKS, THEIR USE AND ABUSE. 

A taste for reading is at once one of the 
most useful and delightful tastes we can 
cultivate. 

It gives ennobling occupation for lei- 
sure hours, it enables one to be happy 
alone, which is a good thing, and one is 
never less alone than when alone with a 
good book. 

It prevents that craving for external ex- 
citement which is the bane and ruin of so 
many. It gives elevation and refinement 
to social intercourse, furnishing useful and 
ennobling topics of conversation to the 
exclusion of frivolous and often slanderous 
gossip. It can adorn the mind with im- 
perishable grace and beauty and endow it 
with immense power for usefulness. It 
can give a beautiful charm to youth, can 
give dignity and wisdom to middle age, 
and open for the evening of life pure well- 
springs of reflection and meditation. 

But valuable as the taste for reading is 
when properly directed and controlled, 
there is no taste more liable to be abused, 

125 



126 Books — Their Use and Abuse, 

and when abused, more injurious to the 
mind. 

Dr. Johnson once said of his age: "The 
mental disease of this generation is impa- 
tience of study of and a contempt for the 
great masters of ancient wisdom." We 
think such a charge is much more appli- 
cable to this age of omniverous, rapid and 
superficial reading than to the age in which 
Johnson wrote and did so much to make 
memorable. 

The great fault of this age is that people 
read too much and think too little. We 
are in the habit of calling this an "intellec- 
tual age." It is certainly an age when in- 
telligence is widely diffused, in which there 
seems to be no end of writing, printing, 
and reading; and if an age when every- 
body reads is an intellectual age, then this 
is surely such an age. But if, by an intel- 
lectual age, we mean an age in which the 
laws of the mind are best understood and 
best observed and in which it has its no- 
blest development, then it is questionable 
whether we may justly lay the flattering 



Books — Their Use and Abuse. 127 

unction to our souls and call this an "in- 
tellectual age." 

A man might as well attempt to eat all 
the food in the market as to read all the 
books that are printed. 

It is estimated that there are more than 
a million different books in the English 
language. Suppose that we admit that 
fifty thousand of these are excellent and 
well worth reading, and suppose a man 
should read a hundred pages a day and a 
hundred volumes in a year, it would take 
just five hundred years to read the fifty 
thousand, and that is more than any man 
can give to reading in a life of three-score 
years and ten. 

It is not possible to read so much nor 
is it wisdom to attempt it. A wise old 
poet says: 

"Learning is more profound 
When in a few solid authors it is found; 
A few T good books, digested well, do feed 
The mind; much cloys, or doth ill humors 
breed." 

We should make a wise and rigid selec- 
tion of books to read, and we should never 



128 Books — Their Use and Abuse. 

be actuated by the weak pride of having 
read everything new, especially if still 
ignorant of that which is old and whose 
age proves its worth. 

"The grand old masters and bards sublime 
Whose steps will ever echo through the 
corridors of time." 

The noble fathers of our noble tongue, 
who drew their buckets up dripping with 
crystal beauty and pure refreshment, from 
the very bottom of the well of "English 
undefiled." Let these be first in order as 
they are first in honor and in worth. 

Let new books bide their time and pass 
through the assayer's crucible before being- 
admitted to our mental fellowship. 

It is not necessary for us to know every- 
thing under the sun. Milton wisely sings: 
"Not to know at large of things remote 
From use, obscure and subtle, but to know 
That which before us lies in daily use, 
This is the prime wisdom.'' 



MISJUDGING PROVIDENCES. 

"All these things are against me." Such 
was the language of the Patriarch Jacob, 
when his sons, returning from Egypt with 
corn in the time of a famine, told him that 
the Egyptian ruler had retained Simeon as 
a hostage until they should bring down 
their younger brother Benjamin to see the 
ruler. 

After unjustly upbraiding them for tell- 
ing the ruler that they had a younger 
brother although the ruler had directly 
asked them if they had, Jacob cried out: 
"Joseph is not! Simeon is not! and now ye 
would take away Benjamin also! All these 
things are against me!" 

So it seemed to the grief-stricken old 
man; but how utterly mistaken he was! 

"Joseph is not!" Oh, but he is; not only 
alive, but Viceroy of Egypt! and has in 
great divinely enlightened wisdom laid up 
corn for the whole nation against this 
famine and has rich provisions for you in 
your old age! 

"Simeon is not!" Oh, but he is; not only 

129 



130 Misjudging Providences. 

alive, but safely in the hands of an un- 
known brother who would not harm him in 
any way and will see that he has every 
comfort, and who would not have kept 
him as a hostage only, that he might make 
sure that they would return and bring his 
beloved young brother with them. 

"And now ye would take away Benjamin 
also!" But not to go into any danger or 
suffer any harm, or even to be long sepa- 
rated from you, old man, but only that 
your beloved son Joseph — whom you 
thought dead, but is alive — may fold to 
his heart his only full brother, your beloved 
Rachel's own son! 

How utterly had Jacob mistaken the 
Providence of God! Instead of being 
against him, all these things were for him. 
God had been making events all move for 
his comfort and happiness even in this life. 

For as soon as Joseph had learned the 
location and condition of his father's fam- 
ily he sent "wagons" up from Egypt to 
move Jacob and his whole household down 
from a famine-stricken land to the well- 
provisioned retreat that he had provided 



Misjudging Providences. 131 

for him in Goshen. And the Viceroy had 
come in his chariot to meet and welcome 
his father and to take him and introduce 
him to Pharo the King, not at all ashamed 
of his dear old shepherd father, and the 
King received him very courteously, and 
asked him: "How old art thou?'' And 
we are quite surprised and disappointed at 
Jacob's answer to this question — for all 
he could find to say, was this: "The days 
of the years of my pilgrimage are an hun- 
dred and thirty years; few and evil have 
been the years of my life." 

And this from a man who had been 
blessed of God as few men had. Who had 
lived a half of a century longer than his 
predecessors; who could trace his pedigree 
to ancestors who had conquered kings and 
made treaties with sovereign states. Who 
had inherited from them a vigorous physi- 
cal constitution and a noble intellect. 

Who had accumulated a great fortune 
by his own talents, and had received a 
noble patrimony from his progenitors, 
Isaac and Abraham. 

Who was the father of a large family of 



132 Misjudging Providences. 

sons, all alive, and the heads of the tribes 
of Israel — and now to crown all of his 
many blessings, his favorite son, whom he 
had long mourned as dead, had brought 
him to Goshen to share in his honors and 
affluence as the Prime Minister and vir- 
tual Ruler of the most wealthy and most 
civilized nation on the face of the earth. 

Surely in the presence of a heathen king 
we should have looked for some words of 
gratitude and praise to Almighty God, 
from a man so blessed of heaven. 

And confess our surprise and disap- 
pointment at Jacob's answer to the King. 

But many years after this, when the 
pious Viceroy comes to Goshen with his 
two sons to receive their grandfather's 
blessing, we come across a record that de- 
lights us and fully satisfies the heart — for 
this is the record we read: "Jacob 
strengthened himself and sat up upon his 
bed to bless them/' And as he looked upon 
their bright young faces, and upon Joseph, 
their father — the beloved son so long 
mourned as dead — and thought of all the 
past and then of the joyous present, he 



Misjudging Providences. 133 

was overcome with gratitude. We can al- 
most see the tears of grateful joy stream- 
ing down his aged face as he lifts his hands 
in prayer to heaven and then lets them 
rest upon the beloved heads of his grand- 
sons and utters these memorable words: 
"The angel that hath redeemed me from all 
evil bless the lads." At last, he saw God's 
hand of love in it all, and the just and 
joyous confession could no longer be re- 
pressed. 

How often men make the mistake and 
misjudgment of Jacob, and think things 
are against them which are for them. 

How incapable are we of judging of the 
true nature and tendency of events; we 
see but a small segment of the circle of 
God's providential dealings; our business 
is to trust in Him and find our peace in 
that trust. As in Jacob's case, sometimes 
God's children are permitted to see this 
in the present life, but if this be not their 
privilege, they shall all see it and rejoice 
in it at the last. 

In the clear light of eternity, the wis- 
dom and love of God in all his dealings 



134 Misjudging Providences. 

with us will shine forth with a radiance so 
clear and bright that it will evoke the rap- 
turous joy and praise of all God's re- 
deemed. 

St. John, in the vision at Patmos, saw 
that day and scene. And heard the glori- 
fied host exultingly singing: "Just and true 
are all thy ways, thou King of Saints/' 

"When all life's lessons have been learned, 
And suns and stars forevermore have 
set, 
The things that our weak judgment here 
have spurned — 
The things o'er which we grieved with 
lashes wet 
Will flash before us out of life's dark night, 
As stars shine most in deepest tints of 
blue; 
And we shall see how all God's plans were 
right, 
And how what seemed unjust, was love 
most true" 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 

No spot in London, nor indeed, in all 
England, impressed us as did Westminster 
Abbey. It is indeed the most unique spot 
on the globe, for it is the only place in the 
world of a "nation's sepulchre." For in its 
monumental tombs it epitomizes the his- 
tory of one of the greatest nations of earth. 
Here repose the ashes of England's great- 
est heroes, statesmen, orators, poets, scho- 
lars and divines. 

As you walk through the silent aisles 
with uncovered brow and read the tablets 
and gaze upon the monuments you feel 
that here are England's greatest treasures. 

What are all her "crown jewels" and 
all the treasures of her great Bank be- 
side these illustrious and immortal names? 
And the magnificent and imperishable his- 
tory connected with these names? 

And what an affluence of great names 
you here find — the names of the men who 
have been the first and foremost among 
all the tribes of earth in science, in art, in 

135 



136 Westminster Abbey. 

literature and in arms, in poetry and ora- 
tory and in church and state. 

We paused at one spot, before two 
tombs side by side, upon which were the 
short, but most significant names "Pitt and 
Fox/' two of England's greatest statesmen 
and political opponents. 

The mighty leaders of those great po- 
litical parties, whose forensic encounters 
were the battle of Titans, and whose politi- 
cal conflicts not only shook England but 
the whole civilized world. Here they slept 
peacefully side by side. 

We recalled the striking lines of Sir 
Walter Scott, as he gazed upon these 
tombs: 

"O taming thought to human pride, 
The mighty chiefs sleep side by side; 
Drop upon Fox's grave the tear, 
'Twill trickle to his rival's bier! 
O'er Pitt's, the mournful requiem sound 
And Fox's will the notes rebound. 
The solemn echoes seem to cry, 
Here let their discords with them die; 



Westminster Abbey. 137 

Speak not for them a separate doom 
Whom fate made brothers in the tomb! 
But search the ranks of living men — 
Where shall you find their like again ?" 

When we came to the "Poets' Corner/' 
what a galaxy of glorious and familiar 
names caught the eye and arrested the 
steps! Milton! Gray! Butler! Southey! 
Goldsmith! Cowley! Thompson! Dryden! 
Beaumont! Ben Johnson! Shakespeare! 
Spencer! back to the time-stained monu- 
ment of Chaucer — the father and founder 
of English poetry — and many have been 
added since our visit, and none nobler or 
greater than beloved Alfred Tennyson! 

What a mighty part have these men 
borne in the great drama of human history 
and in the grand work of Christian civili- 
zation. 

How lean would be the Scroll of Fame 
and how meagre the page of the historian 
if he should be robbed of the names and 
deeds of these immortal men. 

As we gazed upon the monuments and 
read the inscriptions that told of the heroic 
achievements of England's sons in every 



138 Westminster Abbey. 

realm and clime, through so many genera- 
tions, and as we saw how she honored her 
heroes and her scholars and fostered the 
spirit of patriotism in the bosom of her 
children, we felt proud of our old English 
mother. And we were glad to say: "Eng- 
land is truly a great nation/' Faults she 
may have, and she would not be human 
without some; some stains there may be 
upon her past record, which neither tears 
nor years can utterly obliviate, but with 
all her faults, how great her achievements! 

In all that adorns a race, in all the grand 
elements of national greatness and power, 
how has she led the world! 

From that little island in the sea, she 
has spread out an empire that belts the 
globe and exerts a most wholesome influ- 
ence upon all the tribes of earth, standing 
as it ever does for law, for order, for jus- 
tice and for liberty. 

All honor to our noble old English 
mother! "Blood is thicker than water" — 
and no ocean rolling between our shores, 
and no memories of our struggle for in- 
dependence, and no difference in our po- 



Westminster Abbey. 139 

litical institutions shall rob us of the in- 
herent right to rejoice in all the great 
achievements of Englishmen! They are 
an honor to the "Anglo-Saxon" race, and 
belong to us as well as to England. 

Who were the fathers and founders of 
our own nation but "English freemen" 
contending for the same rights and the 
same great principles, that all the great 
champions of liberty in England had con- 
tended for so long and so bravely, and 
whose heroic contests had been the glory 
of English history. 

We have the same ancestry, the same 
laws, the same literature, the same reli- 
gion, and the same spirit of liberty per- 
vading all our institutions, and we should 
be one in sympathy, in affection, and in 
co-operation in spreading Christian civili- 
zation over the globe. 

A war between England and America 
would be a crime against Christian civili- 
zation and an unspeakable calamity, and 
would roll back the wheels of progress for 
generations; but England and America 
united might demand and command the 



140 Westminster Abbey. 

peace of the world and hasten the millen- 
nium of goodwill and brotherly love among 
all nations. 

The wisest and best men of both na- 
tions feel this profoundly, and are seeking 
in every way to promote love and good 
will between these two great English- 
speaking nations. 

Almost the last notes of Tennyson's im- 
mortal harp struck this key: 

"O giant daughter of the West, 
We drink to thee across the flood; 

We know thee best and love thee best, 
For art thou not of British blood?" 

Let America show England in every 
possible way that she reciprocates this lov- 
ing sentiment to the utmost! 

And as her new King, the grandson of 
Victoria the pure and Albert the good, 
has entered so nobly and wisely upon his 
reign, let every American heart sincerely 
and lovingly say: 

"God save the King! 

God bless the English nation !" 



THE SEA. 

Few people stop to think of the varied 
and wonderful beneficence of the sea. 

We read, recently, in one of our popular 
magazines, a poem by a lady, entitled — 

"The Sea in October," 
in which she thus disparages the sea: 

"Not now, not now, the unfruitful sea be 

mine, 
With ever-restless tides which ebb and 

flow 
Like hopes in a sick heart, nay I would 

know 
How soonest to forget this kindred brine; 
Show me some ripened land in mellow 

glow, 
Where hang the clusters of the vine. 
Where apples drop — 
Where browse full-uddered kine; 
Where tilting-top the harvest wagons go, 
A-creek across the fields. " 

Now we are not only amazed at the in- 
gratitude of this poetess who thus turns 
her back upon the sea and turns up her 
pretty nose at it and calls it "names," after 

141 



142 The Sea. 

it has been fanning her cheeks all the sum- 
mer with its cool sweet breezes. 

But we are yet more astonished at her 
ignorance when she calls it the "unfruit- 
ful sea," not knowing that she never would 
have gazed upon the luscious clusters of 
the vine nor heard an apple drop nor 
tasted the rich cream of the "full-uddered 
kine," nor had any butter for her bread, 
nor indeed had any bread to butter or ever 
heard or seen the harvest wagons go "a- 
creek across the fields," but for the benefi- 
cent influence of the sea. 

Instead of being an unfruitful waste, it 
is the sea that keeps the earth from being 
an unfruitful waste. 

The ocean is the physical world's foun- 
tain of life and health; if it were taken 
away, the whole globe robbed of its great 
source of moisture and rain would soon be 
scorched, withered and utterly blasted by 
the heat of the sun. 

Water is as indispensable to all life — 
vegetable and animal — as the air itself, 
and that is entirely supplied by the sea, 
for it is the sun's action upon the sea that 



The Sea. 143 

produces all the rains and dews of earth, 
and thus the grand old ocean is the nurs- 
ing mother of all living things upon the 
globe. 

No matter where a man dwells, whether 
along the serf-beaten shore or in the very 
center of the continent, he is every mo- 
ment enjoying the beneficence of the sea. 

It is the sea that smiles upon him from 
every flower that blooms along his path. 
It is the sea that glistens in the dew-drops 
that shine like jewels on his grass-blades. 
It is the sea that drips with crystal beauty 
and cool refreshment from 

'The old, oaken bucket, 
The iron-bound bucket, 
The moss-covered bucket, 
That hangs in his well." 

It is the sea that glows on the crimson 
or golden globes of his apple orchard, and 
the ripened sheaves of his harvest field; 
in the luscious clusters of his vineyard, 
and the glossy coats of his cattle, and fills 
the udders of his Alderneys with milk as 
rich as cream. It is the sea, my dear igno- 



144 The Sea. 

rant poetess, that feeds and clothes and 
comforts him with summer fruit and 
breeze and shade and shower, and also 
with the cheerful blaze of the winter fire, 
although he may live a thousand miles 
from its shores and has never seen the 
crested beauty of its waves, nor listened 
to its grand eternal anthem. 

And how about its beneficent influence 
on the climate of our globe? Modern 
science has shown that but for it the whole 
belt of the tropics would be a fiery desert, 
and the whole polar region a desert of ice 
and frost. 

One-third of the earth's surface is unen- 
durable because of heat, and another third 
because of cold, leaving only one-third fit 
for the habitation of man, whereas under 
the tempering influence of the sea the 
whole breadth of the world, with small ex- 
ception, is now given to man's use; and 
wherever he dwells he finds a thousand 
things which the same genial influence 
sends to minister to his sustenance and 
comfort. 



The Sea. 145 

How the sea performs this climatic mis- 
sion is a most interesting story. 

The vertical rays of the sun at the trop- 
ics fall upon the sea with a heat almost 
as intense as fire, raising the temperature 
of the sea to eighty-six degrees, causing 
it to flow off in a current of vital warmth 
to the colder regions, the equatorial zone 
thus becoming the very heart of the physi- 
cal world, from which flows the warm and 
vital currents which are its arterial blood. 

There is nothing in the whole world 
more wonderful and beneficent than the 
Gulf Stream, which is a mighty river of 
warm water, in the middle of the ocean, 
three thousand miles long and forty miles 
wide and a thousand feet deep, with a cur- 
rent as swift as the Mississippi River and a 
volume of water a thousand times greater. 

We call the Mississippi the "Father of 
Waters/' it is but a "kid" compared with 
the gulf stream. There is not in the whole 
world such a majestic current. Its foun- 
tain is in the Gulf of Mexico; its mouth 
in the Arctic Seas. Its boundaries are dis- 
tinctly marked by its deep indigo-blue 



146 The Sea. 

color, and it carries its treasured heat 
through all the vast waters of the North 
Atlantic and mitigates the whole climate 
of Northern Europe; the winds sweeping 
over it fill their lungs with its heat, and 
blow their warm breath over the bordering 
lands, and but for this, England and France 
would be doomed to a climate as cold as 
Labrador. 

And this is but a part of its great benefi- 
cent mission. The Gulf Stream starts 
counter-currents from the poles which 
bring immense trains of icebergs from the 
polar regions towards the flaming furnace 
of the tropics and long before any Yankee 
thought of exporting ice to the South, old 
Mother Ocean had been in the business 
and doing it in her own grand style; not 
in little schooner-loads from Maine, but 
whole icebergs from the poles, big enough 
to cool a continent, cooling both water and 
air and creating the sea breeze, which is 
the breath of life to our southern coasts 
— and there is nothing so pure and so re- 
freshing as this breeze from the sea; the 
winds, when they get sick from the malaria 



The Sea. 147 

of the land, go to sea for their health; 
there they frolic with the waves until their 
pollutions are all washed out, and then fill- 
ing their lungs with the pure ozone of the 
sea, they set sail for the shore and bring 
to the sweltering hosts of the continent 
the sweet sea breeze. And again, how few, 
even among intelligent people, stop to 
think of the sea as the great "scavenger" 
of the globe? 

The word "scavenger" was a degrading 
term until the genius of Colonel Waring 
clothed the street cleaners of New York 
City in white duck; then the people called 
them "white angels," for they made the 
streets of the city as clean as a kitchen 
floor and saved the city from pestilence. 

The sea is the grandest, purest, and 
most marvelous of "white angels." 

The process of death and decay that is 
constantly going on, both in the animal 
and vegetable kingdoms, would soon con- 
vert the whole surface of the earth into 
a mass of corruption that would breed a 
pestilence that would sweep all human life 
from the globe. This is prevented solely 



148 The Sea. 

by the grand drainage office of the sea; 
for the only possible purification of the 
earth is by water. The winds could not do 
it, for having no place to deposit their 
burdens and purify their own lungs, they 
would carry pestilence and death instead 
of life and health wherever they went. But 
the rains out of the clouds are fresh from 
the sea; evaporation has emptied their 
hands from all pollutions and they are per- 
fectly prepared for their great sanatory 
work; they fall upon all the surface of the 
earth; they clean the streets; they flush the 
sewers and send the current rushing to the 
rivers and to the sea, and the sea has cav- 
erns enough to hold all the dregs of the 
continents and chemical reagents and salts 
to change their destructive qualities and 
prevent them from sending any mischiev- 
ous atmosphere from their ocean sepul- 
chre — thus the sea becomes the physical 
saviour of the world. 

It is estimated that more than a thou- 
sand million tons of sediment, full of the 
seeds of disease and death, are borne from 
the continents to the sea by the river flow 



The Sea. 149 

of a single summer. All the men and wag- 
ons of the world, if set at the task, could 
not do what is thus done constantly, freely 
and most effectively by the ministry of 
the sea. 

For thousands of years the sea has thus 
kept the old earth fresh and vigorous; has 
filled her lungs with healthful blood; has 
fed her nostrils with the breath of life, and 
filled her heart with the pulse of perpetual 
youth, and flushed her cheeks with ever- 
lasting beauty, and led her forth every 
springtime crowned with fresh flowers — 
blushing with modesty and adorned as a 
bride for her husband. 



THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST. 

There is nothing in all literature so 
unique, so beautiful, so divine as the char- 
acter of Christ, as portrayed in the Gos- 
pels. It is in itself alone the unanswerable 
proof of the divinity of the books that con- 
tain it. 

It never could have been drawn but 
from life — and it never could have been 
realized but from the incarnation of infi- 
nite love. 

It is so august, so sublime, so simple, 
and yet so divine, that even men whose 
unbelief and depravity were ready to ques- 
tion almost everything else, paused when 
they came to the character of Christ as 
something too grand, too holy for even 
sacrilege to assail— and recorded only their 
homage. 

Their testimony is one of the most re- 
markable things in literature. 

Rosseau, the great Frenchman, says "To 
have invented the story of Jesus would 
have been a greater miracle than the story 
itself." If it was a literary fiction, pray, 

150 



The Character of Christ. 151 

who was the brilliant author, and how is 
it we have never heard his name? 

Nay, it is easier to believe that Jesus 
lived than to believe the story of Jesus is 
a lie. 

"Peruse the works of the philosophers, 
with all their pomp of diction; how mean, 
how contemptible when compared w r ith the 
Scriptures! Is it possible that a book, at 
once so simple and yet so sublime, should 
be merely the work of man? 

"Is it possible that the sacred personage 
whose history they contain, should himself 
be a mere man? What purity, what sweet- 
ness in his manners! What an affecting 
gracefulness in his delivery! What sub- 
limity in his maxims ! What profound wis- 
dom in his discourses, what presence of 
mind, what subtlety, what truth in his re- 
plies! How great the command of his pas- 
sions! Where is the man, the philosopher, 
who could so live and so die without weak- 
ness and without ostentation?" 

Renan declares of Christ — 



152 The Character of Christ. 

"The most beautiful incarnation of God! 
God in man! great and beautiful! 
A thousand times more real than insipid 
earthly greatness and insipid earthly 
beauty." 

Strauss calls him "The highest object 
we can possibly imagine." 

Theodore Parker says: "He unites in 
Himself the sublimest precepts and the 
divinest principles, thus more than real- 
izing the dream of prophets and sages, 
rising free from all prejudices of his age, 
nation and sect, and pours out a doctrine 
as beautiful as the light, sublime as heaven, 
and as true as God." 

No character has been so studied, no life 
has been so searched, and yet no fault has 
been found in his character or his utter- 
ances. 

Ten thousand telescopes have been 
turned upon this "Sun of Righteousness," 
but no spot has been found upon its disk. 

And after twenty centuries of the closest 
and most searching scrutiny, the verdict 
of Pontius Pilate has become the verdict 
of history — "I find no fault in Him!' 



The Character of Christ. 153 

And this conception of the character 
and teachings of Christ is not a matter of 
uncertain traditions. 

Here are His recorded utterances. 

Here is the Sermon on the Mount. 

Here are His matchless parables. 

Here are the marvelous conversations 
with his disciples, with Nicodemus and 
others — the wisest, sanest and noblest ut- 
terances that ever fell from human lips on 
mortal ears. 

A great artist once said to his pupil: 
"If you would see the embodiment of all 
that is beautiful in art — go study the 
'Apollo Belvidere.' If you do not see it 
the first time — go again! And if you do 
not see it the second or third time, go 
again. Go until you do see it, for it is 
there r 

And so we would say to those who 
would see all moral loveliness and beauty, 
that they may not only admire but be 
transformed thereby. Study the character 
of Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels. Read 
it thoughtfully, read it repeatedly — and 
you will find it not only the most beauti- 



154 The Character of Christ. 

ful and most lovely, but the most trans- 
forming thing in all literature, bringing to 
your memory the beautiful lines in the 
Battle Hymn of the Republic: 
"In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born 

across the sea, 
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures 

you and me." 




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